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ECONOMY IN EDUCATION 



A PRACTICAL DISCUSSION OF PRESENT-DAY 

PROBLEMS OF EDUCATIONAL 

ADMINISTRA TION 



RURIC NEVEL ROARK, Ph.D., 

DEAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PEDAGOGY, KENTUCKY STATE COLLEGE, 
LEXINGTON, KY. 



NEW YORK. • .CINCINNATI. • .CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 






^- 



LIBRARY of OONGRESS 
Twu Copies riecsivM 



MAR 



!905 



CUISS <Z AXc. Woi 
COPY B. ^^ 



Copyright, 1905, by 
RURIC N. ROARK. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 



koark's econ. 
E--P , 



PREFACE 

This book is the third in the series of whicli " Psy- 
chology in Education " is the first, and " Method in Edu- 
cation " is the second. The purpose of the series has 
been to develop a consistent pedagogy, based both upon 
the physio-psychic growth of the pupil as an individual, 
and upon his functions as a factor in the social organism. 
The work throughout has been done in the light of current 
knowledge of individual and social growth, and has, it 
is hoped, been brought into accord with the safest the- 
ories and most productive practice arising out of that 
knowledge. 

Education as a science is in its infancy, and no final 
word can now^ be written in any department of it. To 
reach fruitful results in the study of education the same 
thing is necessary as has been necessary to the upbuilding 
of any other science, namely, inductive work. The wait 
for trustworthy generalizations must be a long- one, for 
observation, comparison, experimentation not only must 
extend over long reaches of time, much longer than in the 
case of many other sciences, but they are all vitiated by 
elements over which the observer and experimenter can 
have no control. The problem, " Given, the boy and 
girl ; required, the properly educated man and woman," 
is complicated with more incalculable factors than any 
other problem awaiting solution at human hands. 

It is urged that whatever in this book can be used, 
shall be the basis of further careful, continuous, experi- 

3 



4 PREFACE 

mentation. Reading circles and pedagogy classes should 
select such matters as come nearest home to them and 
make of these a close, intensive study, using the material 
indicated in the copious references given. 

RURIC N. ROARK. 

State College of Kentucky, 
Lcxinerton. 



CONTENTS 

PACE 

Introduction 7 

I. Organization and Management of the Individual 

School 11 

(i) The Rural School 11 

A. Equipment II 

B. Organization and Administration . . 24 

(2) The City School 80 

A. Equipment 80 

B. Organization and Administration . . 86 

(3) The College 98 

A. Building and Equipment 98 

B. Organization of the Session .... 100 

C. The Maintenance of Good Order . . loi 

D. Closing the Session n6 

(4) The Teachers' Training School I18 

A. Equipment 1 18 

B. Organization and Administration . . 121 

II. Organization and Administration of School Sys- 
tems 122 

(i) Organization and Interrelation of School Units 123 

A. The State System 123 

B. The City System 159 

(2) The Curriculum 171 

A. Making the Curriculum 172 

B. Administration of the Curriculum . . 207 

III. Correlation of School and Comm«unity .... 229 

(i) The Institutional Factors of Education . . 229 

5 



CONTENTS 



(2) Correlation of Other Factors zvith the School 

A. The Home with the School . 

B. The Library with the School . 

C. Museums with the School . 

D. Art Galleries with the School 

E. The Press with the School . 

F. The Pulpit with the School . 



PAGE 
230 

233 
234 
235 
237 
237 



(3) Projection of the School into the Community 238 

A. Schoolhouses as Community Centers . 238 

B. Public Playgrounds and Vacation Schools 240 

C. Educational Extension 241 



Index 



247 



INTRODUCTION 

The title given to this book is preferred to the older 
and more familiar one of " School Management " because 
it covers a larger field of educational activity than the 
latter term. What has heretofore been published in book 
form, in this division of pedagogy, has for the most 
part been confined to a discussion of the activities of the 
individual school as administered by a single teacher. 
But it is evident, under any adequate definition of educa- 
tion, that there are many other educational forces than 
those of the school, and that there are others than the 
teacher concerned in properly directing these forces. 

The Title Defined. — " Economy in Education," as 
a division of pedagogy, has to do zvith the conserving 
and directing of all the external influences zvhich, com- 
bined zvith the innate self-activity of the pupil, produce 
the result zve call right education. As the words show, 
the concern is with the careful and economical use of 
time, money, and energy in equipping pupils to live their 
own lives rightly and to serve their community. Educa- 
tional economy, as a science, strives to show how to pre- 
vent dissipation and loss of energy, about which Dr. But- 
ler says, " The most serious aspect of the waste that 
surrounds us on every side is not the waste of time, [bad 
as that is]. It is the dissipation of energy, the loss of 
effectiveness, the blunting of natural capacity and apti- 
tude." 

Tompkins says, " At the moment of that efTort on the 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

part of the teacher [to do good teaching], the whole 
school system stands pledged to the unity of inspiration 
of teacher and pupil. . . . The tax-payer is toiling 
for it ; the commissioner of education is issuing his report 
to that end ; the state superintendent is interpreting the 
law to strengthen the work in hand ; the county superin- 
tendent is issuing orders for the good of the cause ; and 
the schoolhouse, with its library, gymnasium, wall map, 
blackboard, crayon, pointer, and erasers, marshalls all its 
forces to the issue. The stove, the desks, the table, the 
curtains at the window, are all focusing their energy at 
the moment to bring the pupil's inspiration up to that of 
the teacher." 

Economy Differentiated from Method. — Educational 
economy plans not only to focus these forces upon the 
pupil in school, but to focus all educational forces 
upon the aim of saving the pupil's mind and body, 
his efforts and interest, his health and energy ; it means 
to save to a generation all that shall enable it to leave 
the work of the world further advanced and easier 
to do. Hence the range of educational economy is 
from the organization and management of the one-room 
country school to the planning and proper administration 
of state and national systems of education. 

The objects of education, in the broadest sense, are to 
make the individual able to use all of himself, and to set 
at work within him motwcs to use all of himself rightly. 
Educational economy is concerned with every instrumen- 
tality by which these objects may be gained. 

Educational economy and educational method alike 
rest upon psychology, but are different in function ; econ- 
omy deals with externals, method with the subject-mat- 
ter of instruction in immediate relation to individual 



INTRODUCTION g 

mind. Economy plans the best attainable curriculum ; 
method devises the best way of making the subject-mat- 
ter of that curriculum take effect upon the individual. 
Economy establishes a system that shall harness all the 
educational forces of the community ; method shows how 
to reach definite results in the individual through his re- 
action to different stimuli. 

Divisions of the Subject. — The discussion of economy 
in education falls naturally under three heads : ( i ) the 
organization and management of the individual school ; 
(2) the organization and administration of school sys- 
tems; and (3) the correlation and useful direction of all 
the educational influences of the community outside the 
school. The whole subject may be conceived under three 
aspects, to which these divisions somewhat closely corre- 
spond, that of the individual teacher's work, that of the 
lawmakers' duty, and that of both as reciprocally related 
to the community. 

The organization and administration of the individual 
school must be in the main the work of the individual 
teacher. No matter how well the school system may be 
planned, no matter how elaborate the care with which the 
state and local authorities attempt to direct the work 
of the schools, it is after all the teacher who makes the 
school an effective agency of education, or defeats the 
best efforts of others to do so. 

On the other hand, the teacher works most efificiently 
when the school is a part of a well organized system. 
The creation of such a system is, of course, the work of 
the state or city, acting through its representatives. And 
these representatives should as closely study the laws of 
educational economy in order to an intelligent enactment 
of law^s governing a system of schools, as they should 



lO 



INTRODUCTION 



study political economy in order to an intelligent enact- 
ment .of laws governing the business and political interests 
of the community. 

But when the people of a community have secured the 
enactment of laws creating a desirable school system, 
the work of public education has scarcely begun. There 
must be close and sympathetic watchfulness by the public 
of its schools, teachers, and school officers, and a constant 
readiness to increase the efficiency of all these by correlat- 
ing with them all the educational factors of the 
community. 



ECONOMY IN EDUCATION 



I. ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF 
THE INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL 

(i) THE RURAL SCHOOL 

It is encourag-ing to note on all sides an awakening of 
sympathetic interest in the problems of the rural school. 
There are no others more important or more insistent 
demanding solution at the hands of educators to-day. No 
apology is necessary for devoting much space herein to 
the schools in which at least two thirds of the school pop- 
ulation of the United States receive their elementary edu- 
cation. 

A. Equipment 

(a) Grounds and Buildings ^ 
Healthfulness and Beauty. — The first requisite in the 
material environment of a school is healthfulness, and the 
second is beauty, one of the elements of beauty being 
adaptation to an end. These two carry with them a 
third, comfort. To say that a schoolhouse should have 
a well drained site, a solid and water-tight foundation, 
and facilities for thorough heating and ventilation, as 
well as protection against the summer sun, is to utter 

' Burrage and Bailey's "School Sanitation and Decoration"; Shaw's 
"School Hygiene"; Report of the Committee of Twelve (N. E. A., 1895); 
Iowa State Report, Nov. '99; N. E. A. Report, 1897: 306, 996; "The Ideal 
School House," World's Work, 2: 866; "Sanitary Legislation for Schools," 
Report U. S. Com. of Ed., '93-4, 2: 1301; State Report of Michigan, 1897. 

II 



12 



ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 



commonplaces, but commonplaces to a realization of 
which many rural communities have not yet attained. 
And almost nowhere is hearty recognition given to the 
just claim that school surroundings should, if they do not 
foster, at least not offend, the aesthetic taste. Even the 
special Committee of Twelve, of the National Educa- 
tional Association, who considered it well worth while 
to enter into minute detail regarding the structure, heat- 
ing, and sanitation of the rural schoolhouse, had next to 
nothing to say about the beautifying of either grounds 
or room. 

Explanations and General Specifications 

Site and Position of House. — Where there is oppor- 
tunity for choice, a site should be selected which affords 
good drainage, and is near no source of infection for air 
or water. As picturesque a spot as possible should be 
chosen. One of the marked advantages of country 
schooling is the opportunity afforded for a cultivation of 
the aesthetic taste. 

The building should be so placed as to be protected 
from the north winds by means of trees or a rise of 
ground, when these are available, and it should look to 
the south ; that is, the windows should be in the south 
side, thus to secure better light and greater warmth in 
the winter. In some sections of this country, however, 
local conditions demand just the reverse of this ; the 
schools are taught mainly in the summer and early fall 
months, and when this is the case, the houses may bet- 
ter have the northerly outlook. 

Fences and Entrances.— Often, in sparsely settled 
communities, it is just as well to have no fence, and to let 
the schoolhouse stand in the midst of the natural grove 
or on top of the picturesque hill, without inclosure of 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 1 3 

any kiiul. The natural environment is quite attractive 
enough without any special yard boundary within which 
to confine the ornamentation of grounds. Neither is there 
need of a fence in thickly settled communities, where 
stock laws are vigorously enforced, the sole reason for a 
fence being found in the fact that the yard, if set with 
flowers or plants, should be protected from the depreda- 
tions of straying animals. 

But if fences are built they should be of the strongest 
and simplest construction, w-ith stout and well hung gates. 

The Yard. — \\'ithout waiting for a formally an- 
nounced " Arbor Day " the children should be encouraged 
to set out and take care of native trees, ferns, mosses, 
and vines. The real sense of communal possession and 
social continuity, as contrasted with a selfish and evanes- 
cent individuality, has but recently begun to take posses- 
sion of us in this country. The man who suggests plant- 
ing shade trees along the highway for the benefit of 
travelers yet to come was, until very recently, more apt 
to be laughed at than encouraged. An indifference to 
any but one's own present wants has long stood in the 
way of a beautification of public property. Teachers 
should see their opportunity and duty in this matter, and 
they and their pupils should take pride in leaving the 
school yard in better condition than they found it. 

The county or township superintendent will find it well 
worth his while to offer some sort of prize for the school 
that makes the greatest improvement in the appearance 
of the school yard during a term. The teacher wall find 
it a plan repaying a trial to appoint, from his pupils, a 
" hold over " committee on care of house and grounds, 
whose duty it shall be to keep a general supervision of 
the schoolhouse and school vard during vacation, and to 



14 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

see that the premises are in good condition for the be- 
ginning of the next term of school. This committee, with 
a Httle encouragement, would plant flowers, and tend 
them through the summer, in order to have an attractive 
yard by the opening of school. 

But, at the same time, it should not be forgotten that 
if no other playground is accessible, the right of the chil- 
dren to the school yard for purposes of legitimate play 
should not be unwisely abridged. 

The Schoolhouse. — There is no excuse or justifica- 
tion for the unsightly boxes with sloped roofs that pass 
for country schoolhouses in most parts of the land. 
With but little more, or with no more, money than is now 
spent on these unassthetic structures, one-room houses of 
simple and tasteful architecture could be erected. It is 
true economy in every case to get an architect to prepare 
the plans, but in the event that this can not be done, 
recourse should be had to some of the ready-prepared 
plans so easily obtained. Excellent ones will be found in 
Circular No. 3, 1891, issued by the United States Bureau 
of Education, and in the Iowa State Report of 1899. 
Nearly any other sort of architectural contrivance is 
preferable to the plain rectangular box with a wedge- 
shaped roof, which has so long and so inefficiently done 
duty as a country schoolhouse. 

The outside walls should be painted or stained in some 
quiet color either blending or contrasting harmoniously 
with the setting of the house. Harsh, glaring, pro- 
nounced colors should be avoided. 

The aim throughout should be to set an object lesson 
'before pupils and patrons, so they will say with deep 
pride, " That is onr schoolhouse," instead of " That is 
the schoolhouse," 



THE RL-RAI. SCHOOL 15 

Foundation. — This should lie of stone ; bricks are 
too absorbent of moisture. If stone is too expensive, 
then well-seasoned posts, charred or tarred, will 
serve, but they should be closely boarded over. In any 
circumstances, the foundation should be made as nearly 
moisture-proof as possible. 

Entrances. — It is best to have two entrances to the 
schoolhouse, one for boys, the other for girls, and each 
entrance should lead directly into a cloakroom, from 
which exit may be had into the schoolroom, through a 
swinging door. Each entrance way should be protected 
by a porch or stoop, where should be placed both a foot 
scraper and foot wiper, special care being taken to see 
that the children use these articles thoroughly. 

Cloakrooms. — The house should be planned large 
enough to allow a space at least six feet wide and run- 
ning the entire width of the building, to be set aside for 
cloakrooms. There should be a solid partition between 
the two cloakrooms and each should open directly into 
the schoolroom. In each cloakroom there must be a 
good supply of hooks, and two shelves about 4^ feet 
from the floor running entirely around the room. There 
should also be an umbrella holder; a joint of ten inch 
glazed pipe, closed at one end, serves admirably and is 
very cheap. The drainage from wet umbrellas should 
never be permitted to run on the floor. 

A wash stand, a basin and pitcher of some non-break- 
able material, and a roller towel, are necessary to com- 
plete the equipment of the cloakroom. 

Floor. — The floor should be double, i. e., closely fit- 
ted narrow flooring laid upon a first floor of wider boards 
with thick carpet paper, or something better, between. A 
floor with cracks and gaping seams, admitting streams 



1 6 ORG AN I Z AT I ON AND MANAGEMENT 

of cold air, is far from economical. The surface should 
be finished with some sort of durable and smooth floor 
varnish ; a floor that can not be freed of dust and dirt is 
ultimately expensive. The best modern sanitation de- 
mands, also, that wood floors in all public buildings shall 
not be dry-swept, but oiled and wiped or brushed. 

Walls. — These may be of any material suited to the 
foundation. A most comely and serviceable schoolhouse 
may, in fact, be built of logs from the ground up, and will 
be far more comfortable than a building clapped together 
out of unseasoned boards. Within, the wall surfaces 
should be too smooth and hard to hold microbe-bearing 
dust, but should be finished v^dthout glare, in some quiet 
restful tint, preferably a light gray with a faint trace of 
green in it. Eyes are too valuable to be exposed to the 
merciless glint of white walls. 

The walls should meet floor and ceiling with a curve, 
not at a sharp angle, so that dust and dirt may be easily 
removed. 

Windows. — The schoolroom should be lighted from 
one side only, by several large windows placed quite close 
together and occupying a large portion of one wall. 
They should begin about three feet from the floor and 
extend to within a few inches of the ceiling. The win- 
dow surface should be from one sixth to one fourth of 
the floor surface, and the windows should run up as high 
as possible so that the opposite dead wall may be lighted 
fully. 

The admission of light may be controlled from the in- 
side by means of light-colored, translucent shades rolling 
up from the bottom. A very convenient shade is now 
supplied by dealers, which both rolls, and slides up and 
down on vertical rods. This arrangement permits of so 



THE RrR.U. SCnO(^l. \y 

adjusting the shade as to meet the sun's rays at whatever 
angle they come. The sun's glare and heat may he 
controlled from the outside hy means of shutters. 

The window sashes should fit closely and he securely 
hung" with counterweights. 

Air Space of Room. — The minimum air space of a 
schoolroom, per pupil, is fixed by law in sonie states, and 
should be so fixed in all. There should be afforded never 
less than 200 cubic feet of air space for each pupil whose 
name appears in the school census for a given district. 
In this way, allowing for an attendance always some- 
what less than the census enumeration, there is sure to be 
enough space for all who do attend. Such provision 
would recjuire the ceiling to be at least twelve feet from 
the floor, and each pupil would have not less than six- 
teen square feet of floor space. 

Heating Apparatus. — A good means of heating, and 
at the same time ventilating, one room or many is a hot 
air furnace placed in the basement or cellar. Few rural 
schools can afford this, however, and may use with 
nearly as good results a ventilating stove, which can be 
secured through any hardware dealer. But if for any 
reason this can not be obtained, the principle upon which 
it operates may be quite successfully applied to any or- 
dinary heating stove in the following way : Select a 
stove with a wide, flat bottom, and set it up, without legs, 
in a shallow box filled with sand. Bring the outer air di- 
rectly against the lower part of the fire-bowl, by means 
of a pipe passing through the wall at the floor. The 
outer end of this pipe should be flush with the outside 
wall and covered with heavy, close wire netting; the in- 
ner end should terminate in a sort of bonnet or hood 
which will serve to deliver the cold air directly upon the 

Roark's Econ. — 2 



i8 



ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 



stove. The stove should be placed in one end of the 
room quite near the wall, and the pupils should be pro- 
tected from the direct radiation of heat by means of a 
semi-cylindrical shield of tin or sheet iron, which, by 
reason of its shape, will stand on end without other sup- 
port, and which should have wooden handles on the sides 







FRESH 


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Floor Plan of Schoolroom 

by which to lift it about. By keeping the stove well 
heated the whole room will receive, by convection, a sup- 
ply of fresh, heated air, and yet, by reason of the shield, 
pupils nearest the stove will experience no discomfort. 

It is time the old and long accepted way of heating 
with an unshielded stove in the middle of the room should 
be everywhere definitely abandoned. It is a fruitful 
source of discomfort and disorder. 

Ventilation. — The heating arrangement just described 
provides for a sufficient inflow of fresh air. But there 
must also be a correspondingly free outflow of impure 
air, and this is best provided for by passing a short pipe 
from the space between the cloakrooms into the safety 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 



19 



flue around the stove pipe, as shown in the diagram. By 
this plan, currents of air pass from the schoolroom 
through the vents shown at the bottom of the wall, and 
after partially heating the cloakrooms, and drying the 
wraps, pass by the vents at the bottom of the cloakroom 
partition walls into the space between them, and so up 



:w 



lUl 



0HHE:3Hnmnnmnnnr 




Plan for Warming and Ventilating 

the safety flue, which thus serves both to protect against 
an overheated stovepipe and to ventilate the building. 
(b) Furniture and Apparatus^ 

Desks and Seats.— The furniture of a schoolroom 
should be of the simplest and strongest make, with the 
fewest possible fittings to get broken or out of order. 

The teacher's desk should be placed upon a low 
stage, not over ten or twelve inches high, at the end of 

1 Shaw's "School Hygiene"; Burrage and Bailey's "School Sanitation 
and Decoration"; "Hygienic Desks," Educational Review, 18: i, 9- 



20 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

the room opposite the entrances. This stage should be 
so fitted to the wall and floor as to prevent dirt from ac- 
cumulating around it and under it. 

The children's desks and seats must be single and ad- 
justable. Desk and seat should be in no way connected, 
but each should be separately screwed to the floor. The 
trouble experienced with some patterns of adjustable 
seats, which a big boy may work loose by a few vigorous 
pushes, may be obviated by using seats with a three- 
toed pedestal — one toe projecting rearward and two at 
a wide angle frontward. The greater the leverage the 
chair has for holding, the less the leverage the boy has 
with which to press it loose. 

No desk or seat should have any hinged part, or any- 
thing about it that can flap, slam, or creak. It may be 
added here that loose floor boards, creaking doors, and 
rattling windows should be immediately attended to ; 
sources of noise of any kind should be reduced to a 
minimum. 

There should be a table of ordinary height about which 
the older pupils may quietly gather to consult books, 
or to read the periodicals ; and a low table for the little 
people is almost indispensable. 

Ink and Holders. — The ink problem is a serious one, 
and promises to remain so. It will not be solved until 
an ink holder is invented that will not tip over, that 
can not be used to make noise, and that will not offer 
temptation to the pupil to fill it with chalk dust or paper. 

Blackboards. — If the windows are all on one side 
of the room, as they ought to be, the opposite wall should 
be covered with blackboard as high as the older pupils 
can comfortably reach. The blackboard should also ex- 
tend low enough to accommodate the little people. 



THE RfRAL SCHOOL 21 

A good material for blackboards is a preparation sim- 
ilar to a heavy oilcloth or linoleum, which may be cut 
to any length and fitted to any space. When possible, 
the blackboard should lie flush with the wall surface, and 
the joint should be smoothly finished. If a strip of 
molding is used to cover the joint, the upper edge should 
have a very flat bevel so as not to hold dust. 

The ideal arrangement for crayons and erasers is a 
trough in two sections, lying close against the wall at 
the lower edge of the blackboard. The upper section 
should be made of wire netting with a mesh that will let 
dust and all pieces of crayon less than three fourths of 
an inch long drop into the lower section. This lower 
section should be easily removable, so that it can be taken 
out and cleaned frequently. 

When really dustless and greaseless crayons and erasers 
come on the market only that kind should be used. 

Maps and Globes. — Only a small equipment of maps 
is necessar}'. What are needed should be printed on 
strong material and hung on spring rollers. The outfit 
will vary to suit local demands, but the following items 
are necessary everywhere : (i) A map of the world, (2) 
a map of each hemisphere, (3) a map of the United 
States, (4) a map of the state, (5) a commercial map, 
which should show clearly the standard-time divisions, 
(6) a development map, showing the territorial growth 
of the United States. 

Although not absolutely necessary, two globes, costing 
not over half a dollar each, will be found very useful. 
One of them should be an ordinary map globe ; the other 
should have a blackened surface upon which drawing 
may be done with chalk. 

Rural school boards can not be too strongly advised 



22 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

against wasting money in the purchase of expensive 
globes and " tellurians." 

Arithmetical Aids. — Arithmetic should be taught ob- 
jectively in all classes, but the apparatus needed, except 
a dissected sphere and a set of cube-root blocks, can be 
made by the pupils under the teacher's direction, or, as 
in the case of measures, brought by them from home. 
Even the dissected sphere, for illustrating the rule for 
finding solid contents, and the cube-root blocks, may be 
made by pupils advanced enough to use such apparatus. 
In fact, it should be the teacher's aim to have the pupils 
themselves construct as much of the illustrative appa- 
ratus as possible in all subjects. 

Lamps. — If the schoolhouse is to be used as a gather- 
ing place for the purposes described later, it must be 
provided with means of artificial lighting. It is safe 
to say that very few rural schoolhouses are supplied 
with good lamps ; and it is equally safe to say that 
any schoolhouse so supplied is worth educationally fifty 
or seventy-five per cent more to the community than the 
same house would be without the lamps. 

Books and Bookcase. — No matter how freely the 
school may be supplied with books from a traveling or 
circulating library, as in Ohio and New York, it should 
have a permanent collection of books of its own. Books 
of reference are just as properly classed as " apparatus " 
as globes or a set of mathematical blocks. One of the 
prime purposes of a school is to teach pupils to use books 
as tools. 

Every school must have at least an authoritative un- 
abridged dictionary and a good encyclopedia. As many 
more books of reference as can be secured should be 
added, and a few standard periodicals. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 23 

But none of these will be of much service unless proper 
provision is made for taking- care of them. If the school 
owns but one book, there should be a bookcase in which 
to keep it. No book should ever be given out without 
being- charged to the pupil who takes it. 

It would be wise to provide a case in the lower part of 
which could be kept apparatus and other illustrative 
material when not in use. One corner of this case should 
be set aside to accommodate the item next described. 

" Emergency " Medical Case. — So long as sports and 
games are what they are on country school playgrounds, 
so long will it be advisable to have at hand some simple 
remedies for bruised flesh, cut fingers, sprained ankles, 
and possibly w^orse hurts ; and any teacher would be glad 
to have within quick reach a few of the common, homely 
medicines for the sudden ills with which children are 
sometimes seized. Such a case should be furnished, 
among other things, with bandages, courtplaster and sur- 
geon's plaster, arnica, ammonia for bites and stings, 
vaseline, turpentine, camphor, an alcohol lamp, and a sup- 
ply of alcohol for quickly heating water or other liquids. 

Drinking Facilities. — The water supply should be 
most carefully provided and guarded. For country 
schools a deep, driven well is best. Shallow wells, cis- 
terns left uncared for and stagnant during half the year, 
and springs, unless most favorably situated and in thinly 
settled regions, should not be used. But whatever the 
source of supply, it should be carefully examined and 
put in proper condition before the opening of school. 

The best water vessel to be used is a large, unglazed 
earthen jar, set in a plain box just large enough for its 
sides to be tangent to the jar, and with large holes bored 
in the bottom. The jar should be fitted with a good 



24 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

cover, and should have a self-shutting faucet. The un- 
glazed walls of the jar permit water to seep through 
them, and the evaporation of this from their outer sur- 
faces keeps the water quite cool even on a hot day. If 
the jar can be put where there is no danger of breakage, 
the box is not needed ; without it, the air comes more 
fully in contact with the jar. 

The jar should never be kept in the schoolroom, but 
should be set, preferably, upon a stand or bracket in the 
porch or entry. Each child should have his own drink- 
ing cup, and should use no other. 

B. Organization and Administration 
(a) Grading and Grouping ^ 

The fact that in a large majority of country districts 
the time and energy of the teacher and pupils are wasted 
through an unnecessary multiplicity of classes is suffi- 
cient justification for saying something further upon the 
subject of the ungraded, or, as it has been more prop- 
erly called, the " poly-graded," state of the rural school. 

One extreme of the ungraded plan, or lack of plan, 
exists in a few remote districts even to-day. The teacher 
will be found hearing at least as many recitations daily 
as he has pupils, and usually more; there are no classes, 
and each pupil comes up and reads or " does his sums " 
as he gets ready or is called. 

The opposite extreme is found in some of our over- 
graded, hyper-systematized city schools. The country 
school may, if it will, enjoy a golden mean between these 
two extreme conditions. The country teacher has op- 
portunities for liberty of action, original initiative and 
experimentation, and freedom from deadly mechanism, 

^Report of the Committee of Twelve (N. E. A., iSgs'); Circular No. 6, 
1884, U. S. Bureau of Education; The Public School Journal, 12:307. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 25 

which his more closely beset city brother may well envy 
him. There is room in the management of a country 
school for a flexibility of arrangement and administra- 
tion that does not seem, so far, to have been attained in 
city systems. 

Divisions. — The process of putting system into the 
country schools will be facilitated by grouping the grades 
into three divisions — Primary, Intermediate, and Ad- 
vanced. Such an arrangement has the merit of being 
both correct in theory and familiar from long usage. 

The first or primary division, made up of the first three 
grades, includes pupils whose capacities are still chiefly 
at the elementary acquisition stage, and for whose in- 
struction therefore the teacher relies mainly upon their 
interested contact wath their material environment, nat- 
ural and artificial. The second or intermediate divi- 
sion, made up of the second three grades, includes those 
for whom no less stress should be laid upon acquisitional 
exercises, but who should begin to have their assimilative 
powers more specifically called into play, and their nor- 
mal muscular activities directed to consciously creative 
expressional work. The last or advanced division, con- 
sists of the two highest grades, and in this, without per- 
mitting either class of the activities specifically operative 
in the other two to flag, the teacher should aim to culti- 
vate especially the higher social feelings and their cor- 
rect expression in conduct and behavior ; and should di- 
rect with increased care the creative capacities with their 
concomitant expressional tendencies. 

However, too much stress must not be laid upon 
psychological ^ distinctions between these divisions ; there 
are no hard and fast lines of demarcation between them, 

^ Consult Roark's " Psychology in Education," p. 252, et scq. 



26 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

and they are to be used quite as much upon grounds of 
expediency as for psychological reasons. 

Classifying. — A class is a group of pupils of the same 
degree of advancement in a subject. Every school 
should be classified as closely as possible, for at least two 
reasons — ( i ) in order to save time and energy, and 
(2) in order that the pupils may profit by the spirit of 
emulation engendered by class work. 

Every pupil of normal capacity of body and mind 
should carry not fewer than four studies, and should 
therefore be in that number of classes. If there are no 
other conditions afifecting the case, each pupil's studies 
should be adapted to the principle of correlation de- 
veloped below, pp. 211-215. That is, the pupils of Divi- 
sion I. should have at least two specifically acquisitional 
exercises daily, one assimilational, and one expressional 
in addition to the incidental expression accompanying all 
exercises. The pupils of Division II. should have about 
the same assignment of subjects, but the emphasis should 
be slightly shifted so as to rest somewhat more upon the 
assimilational and expressional ; and those of Division 
III. should be led to do more thinking and expressing 
than they did while in Divisions I. and II. 

Grading.^ — In the present condition of educational 
nomenclature the terms " grade " and " grading " are 
used with more than one meaning. " Grading the 
school " may mean placing the pupils in the coordinate 
classes where they belong; or it may mean marking ofif 
the course of study into divisions based upon the rela- 
tion of one subject to another; or, again, it may refer 
to the proper grouping of studies in successive years. 

A grade is a group of classes of coordinate rank. The 

^Report of the Committee of Twelve (N. E. A., 1895), p. 94. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 27 

distinction between a class and a grade is not observed 
so closely as it ought to be either by those who write of 
these things or by those who organize school work. 

A pupil is " classed " if he is grouped wnth. other 
pupils doing the same work in the same branch ; he is 
*' graded " if he is doing work of the same degree of ad- 
vancement in several different subjects. Plainly, then, 
he may be classed without being graded. The ideal con- 
dition is found when the pupil is both classed according 
to his individual needs, and is so graded as to come into 
contact with the various subjects of the curriculum at 
the same level. 

Number of grades. — In spite of efforts, and of the- 
ories that have never reached the level of effort, the 
necessary number of grades remains at seven or eight. 
The time of a grade should not be more than one year, 
and in the country schools it can not, in the face of pres- 
ent conditions, very well be less. There is no way of 
grouping which will allows profitable w^ork to be done by 
throwing classes that should be in separate grades to- 
gether in regular study. The few exceptions that may 
be made support the rule. There are other and more 
rational and effective ways of saving what the rural 
teacher so much needs, time. 

Advantages of Grading. — Proper grading and classi- 
fying have other marked values besides that of saving 
time. In the first place, the pupil's ambition is aroused 
to stay with his grade, to allow nothing to make him so 
irregular in attendance or lax in effort as to occasion his 
demotion. Many a pupil is held to effective effort by 
his simple determination not to let another pupil get 
ahead of him, although he cares but little, at first, for 
knowledge or school work as such. There is none of us. 



28 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

young or old, but will go faster if he has a good 
" pace maker." This stimulus the pupil must have in 
order to work effectively, and he will have it if he is well 
classed, even though the school is not closely graded. 

But the impulse of a larger ambition will be felt if the 
teacher can inspire his pupils with the love of learning, 
can make them lay hold upon the things of the mind, 
and if at the same time the school '"s so graded that, upon 
finishing the course it offers, the pupil can, without hitch 
or break in his progress, go right on into the higher 
work of the next school above. Even an enthusiastic 
teacher finds it difficult to fire the ambition of a pupil 
to do higher work, when progress through the curri- 
culum is so irregular that an extra year or two must be 
spent in bringing up work which was neglected because 
of poor grading, but which must be completed before 
admission can be had into good secondary schools. 

But in case there is neither intention nor opportunity 
of entering upon a higher course, the pupil nevertheless 
takes great satisfaction in having completed some definite 
and rounded course of study, even though it be only ele- 
mentary. In recognition of this fact, many state systems 
provide for the graduation of pupils from the common- 
school course. It is no uncommon thing to see the large 
public room in a little country town packed with parents 
who have driven miles to be present at the " graduation " 
of son or daughter. It is not possible to estimate all the 
helping force of such an event, or the evil waste that 
happens when a pupil, as is too often the case, enters 
school in the fall only to take up the same studies and go 
over nearly the same ground as in the last term. Un- 
graded school work is very apt to begin anywhere and 
arrive nowhere. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 29 

Practical Difficulties in Grading. — In many instances 
the practical difficulties in the way of grading the country 
school are so great that the teacher does not even try to 
overcome them, and contents himself with " hearing les- 
sons " and drawing his pay. Often, the parents are so 
indifferent and careless about everything that touches 
the real welfare of the school that they lend no en- 
couragement to any eft'ort to put school work into or- 
derly arrangement, and may become actively hostile to 
any attempt to do so, if their children should be " turned 
back " or prevented from taking w'hatever studies they 
desire. It not infrequently happens that a father or 
mother sends a peremptory note or verbal order forbid- 
ding the teacher to require " Sam " or " Sara " to pursue 
certain branches. The father who thinks his son needs 
no schooling beyond a little arithmetic in order success- 
fully " to run a farm," the mother who thinks it is not 
" nice " for her daughter to study physiology, the over- 
grown boy who thinks composition and grammar dis- 
tinctively feminine branches and wall therefore have 
neither, these are by no means extinct species and still 
try the souls of faithful teachers who would bring order 
out of ungraded chaos. 

Nor do the teacher's troubles wath grading stop here. 
He must also contend with the chronic irregulars, with 
those who attended a " subscription school " last spring, 
and with those w^ho should have been demoted long ago, 
but who w^ere not because of lack of backbone in his 
predecessors. And if to all these things there is added, 
as too often is the case, the active opposition of the 
teacher to a system of grading, or to system of any kind 
that requires real work at his hands, then the outlook is 
indeed gloomy. But the people of an American com- 



30 



ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 



munity can have anything- they want, and when they 
come to understand what a well graded country school 
means, and really want it, they will have it. 

(b) Suggestive Scheme of Gradation ^ 

As indicated in a previous paragraph, the matter of 
grading may be considered first as to the number of 
grades, or steps, into which each subject falls naturally, 
and second as to the number of studies and other exer- 
cises that can economically be put into each grade, or 
year of study. The following schedules representing 
these two aspects are offered as embodying the results 
of actual experience in communities of widely different 
conditions. The effort is here made to present something 
suggestive and adaptable. 

The subjects that shall make up a common school 
curriculum are here taken for granted. The right of 
these subjects to a place in the course of study will be 
considered later. 

The present discussion precedes that of the adminis- 
tration of the school, because the grading of school work 
can not be done wholly by any one teacher ; it is part 
of the life, the continuity, of the school, and is ac- 
complished and maintained by successive teachers ; while 
the administration of the organized school is the work 
of each individual teacher. 

Grade I. — Chart Grade" (4 to 6 recitations daily; 8 to 10 min- 
utes to a recitation.) 

1 Refer to Roark's " General Outline of Pedagogy," p. s, et seq; Report 
of the Committee of Twelve (N. E. A., 1895), p. 161; Revised Course of 
Study for the Common Schools of Illinois; " Uniform Course of Study of 
Indiana"; Prince's "Course of Studies for Elementary Schools" (two 
reports, 1897, 1898, Boston); Circular of Information No. 6, 1884 (Bureau 
of Education, Washington) ; McMurry's " Course of Study for the Eight 
Grades." 

* For methods of handling the work of each grade, see Roark's " Method 
in Education." 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 31 

Reading, with wruiiig and spelling, twice daily. 

Arithmetic. Counting ; reading and writing figures ; 
fundamental operations to two places, once daily. 

Geography and Nature Study. ^ Outdoor, objective 
oral instruction, once weekly, combined with sim- 
ilar work in next two grades. 

History and Ciz'ics. Simple stories, told and read, 
with illustrations drawn from every day expe- 
riences, once weekly, combined with similar work 
in the next two grades. 

Language. Conversations, with special aim of secur- 
ing Hucncy on the part of the pupil. Incidental 
correction of errors of pronunciation, enunciation, 
and syntax. Much of this should be done in con- 
nection with the other exercises, but, if possible, a 
special exercise should be devoted to it at least 
once a week. 

Draii'ing should be practiced in connection with other 
exercises, especially nature study and language. 

Vocal Music, in common with the other grades of 
the first division, daily. 

Seat Work^ at desk or table. Selected kindergarten 
employments, cutting and folding, modeling 
familiar objects in clay and sand. 
Grade II. — (4 recitations daily; 10 to 15 minutes to a recita- 
tion.) 

Reading, with spelling and writing, twice daily. 

Arithmetic. Fundamental operations continued; 
" wet " and " dry " measure and simple long 
measure tables built objectively by the pupils, read- 
ing and writing of simple fractions, with objective 
illustrations ; United States small coins ; Roman 
numerals to L. ; " information talks " upon quan- 

^ Every teacher should consult, for suggestions in Nature Study, Wil- 
son's "Nature Study in the Elementary Schools"; Longman's "Object 
Lessons"; Jackman's "Nature Study for the Common Schools"; Bert's 
"First Steps in Scientific Knowledge"; McMurry's "Special Method in 
Science"; Hodge's "Nature Study Leaflets" (Clark University); Report 
of the Committee of Twelve (N. E. A., 1895), p. 142; Needham's "Out- 
door Studies." 

*With seat work constructive outdoor occupations may often be alter- 
nated in all the grades. 



32 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

lities and their expression, as dozen, week, forl- 
iiight, month, etc., once daily. 

Other exercises as described in Grade I., and com- 
bined with those of that grade. Language in this 
grade should be both oral and written. Simple 
'■ information talks " in hygiene should be begun. 
Grade III. — (4 recitations daily, 10 to 15 minutes to a recita- 
tion ) . 

Reading, with spelling and writing, twice daily. 
There should be a good deal of supplonentary 
reading in this and the next two grades. 

Arithmetic. Review, with many practical drills, of 
the number work of previous grades ; fundamental 
operations in numbers to three places ; addition 
and subtraction of simple fractions ; simple ap- 
plications of arithmetic to ordinary household af- 
fairs, once daily. 

Geography. Modeling reliefs in sand and clay ; re- 
view of geographical terms learned in previous 
grades ; map drawing and use of wall maps begun, 
once a week. 

Nature Study. Observation of leaves, fruits, seeds ; 
recording weather conditions (daily) ; study of 
birds' habits and usefulness, once or twice a week. 

Physiology. " Information talks " continued, on 
the senses and on the hygiene of the skin, teeth, 
and hair. 

Other exercises, as described in Grade I., carried 
forward to suit the pupils' advancement. Some of 
the simplest sloyd exercises may be introduced in 
this grade.^ Constant practice should be afforded 
in both the oral and written use of English, based 
on the subject matter of other exercises; "mem- 
ory gems " should be introduced. 
Grade IV. — (4 recitations daily, 15 to 20 minutes to a recita- 
tion.) 

Reading. In the Reader three times a week ; in 
selected supplementary reading twice a week. 

'Refer to Reports of U. S. Commissioner of Education, '92—3, i: 1193, 
and '95-6, 2: 1132; Compton's "First Lessons in Wood Working"; Kirk- 
wood's "Sewing Primer"; N. E. A. Reports, '88: 570; '89: 104; '90: 828; 
'01: 100, 257. 



THE RVRAL SCHOOL 33 

U'liting in copybooks, or from the teacher's black- 
board copy, daily. 

Spt'lli)ig from the reading lesson, daily. 

Aritlntictic. Multiplication table completed and 
drilled upon ; tables of measures and weights thor- 
oughly learned ; simple exercises in common and 
decimal fractions ; business forms and practical 
problems drawn from the pupils' experiences, once 
daily. 

Graiiimar. Oral lessons on the easier parts of 
speech, illustrated from the reading lessons, two 
or three times a week. 

Geography. Simple lessons with the globe, and con- 
tinental relief maps, once or twice a week. 

Nature Study. Outdoor lessons on soil, trees, in- 
sects (uses and disadvantages), once or twice a 
week. 

Physiology. " Information lessons " on the organs 
of respiration — their physiology and hygiene, 
hygiene of eating, once a week. 

Civics. Oral lessons, illustrated by current events, 
once or twice a week. 

United States History. Stories told or read, in 
chronological order, with incidental use of the 
map, once a week or oftener. 

Language. Memorizing and correct recitation of 
short literary selections ; model letters ; short com- 
positions, written without special preparation, 
upon topics suggested by other school work ; care- 
ful drill upon the mechanical side of composition 
(capitals, punctuation, spelling, etc.), once or 
twice a week. 

Drazving and Music continued as before. 

Seat zvork. Elementary sloyd. 

The pupils of all grades should be encouraged and helped in 
their spontaneous efforts at making things out of school. There 
should be occasional exhibits of such work. 

Grade V. — (4 to 5 recitations daily, 15 to 20 minutes to a reci- 
tation.) 
Reading. In the Reader twice a week, alternating 
Roark's Econ. — 3 



34 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

with selected supplementary reading three times a 
week. 

Writing as in Grade IV. 

Spelling as in Grade IV. Special attention to spell- 
ing in all written work. 

Arithmetic. Mixed numbers; L. C. M. ; square and 
cubic measure (simple objective problems) ; per- 
centage begun ; practice to make fundamental pro- 
cesses automatic, once daily. 

Grammar. Incidental to the reading and to all lan- 
guage work. No text-book. 

Geography. First half of text-book, once daily. 

Nature Study. Observation and record of habits 
of plants and animals ; verification of weather 
proverbs, once or twice a week. 

Physiology. Oral lessons in the anatomy and phys- 
iology of osseous and muscular systems ; hygiene 
of exercise, once or twice a week. 

United States History combined with civics. Ele- 
mentary text, or lessons as suggested in Grade IV., 
once or twice a week. 

Language. " Memory gems " once a week ; written 
exercises and simple compositions in connection 
with other work, especially nature study. 

Drawing mainly in connection with other work. 

Vocal music mainly at opening exercises and rest 
periods. 

Sloyd, in some form adapted to the conditions of the 
school. 
Grade VI. — (4 to 5 recitations, 20 minutes to the recitation.) 

Reading. Selections from literature two or three 
times a week. Regular use of Readers discon- 
tinued. 

Spelling as in last grade ; oral spelling drill with two 
upper grades once a week. 

Writing. Practice for speed and legibility three 
times a week. 

Arithmetic. Proportion ; simple interest ; computa- 
tions of the farm and market, once daily. Special 
attention should be given to securing clearness, 
accuracy, and rapidity. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL. 35 

Grammar. Good text-book combining much practice 
in language with some technical grammar, once daily. 

Geography. Text-book completed, once daily. 

Nature Study. Observation work continued as in- 
dicated in Grade V. ; simple experiments in physics 
once a week.^ 

Physiology. Elementary text-book, or oral lessons 
on the anatomy and physiology of the digestive 
system, once or twice a week. 

Other exercises as described for Grade V. 
Grade \'II. — (4 to 5 recitations, 20 minutes to a recitation.) 

Reading. Selected literature, with class discussions, 
once a week. 

Spelling as in Grade VI. 

Writing as in Grade VI., twice a week. Careful at- 
tention should be given to the penmanship of all 
written exercises, whether on blackboard or paper. 

Arithmetic. Review and drill for accuracy and 
rapidity ; interest continued ; simple problems in 
square and cube root ; applications in various in- 
dustries, once daily. 

Grammar as in Grade VI.; diagramming of easy 
sentences, once daily. 

Geography. No text-book needed ; applied geog- 
raphy in current events." 

Nature Study. Observation and record of the life 
history of some living thing, plant, animal ; illus- 
trated oral lessons on the simple machines (pupils 
should make the machines), twice a week. 

Physiology. Elementary text-book taken up and 
completed, once daily. 

U. S. History. Text-book begun ; geography refer- 
ences and drawing of illustrative maps made prom- 
inent, once daily. 

Civics incidental to history. 

Language. Forensic exercises weekly; written work 
as in previous grades. 

Other exercises as in Grade V. 

^ Refer to Cooley's "Experiments in Physical Science"; Holbrook's 
New Method"; Trowbridge's "Physical Science at Home." 
2 Roark's "Method in Education," p. 190. 



36 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

Grade VIII. — (4 recitations, 20 to 25 minutes to a recitation.) 

Reading as in Grade VII., perhaps less often. The 
aim in the two highest grades should be to culti- 
vate a knowledge and love of good literature. 

Spelling as in last grade. 

Writing only in connection with written work in 
other subjects. 

Arithmetic. Simple algebra introduced ; geometric 
forms and terms ; mensuration, once dailj'. 

Grammar. Text-book in grammar; parsing and dia- 
gramming, once daily. 

Georgraphy as in Grade VII. 

Elementary Science. Simple experiments in physics 
and chemistry ; review of physiology with oral 
lessons on domestic sanitation, once or twice a 
week. 

U. S. History. Text-book completed, once daily. 

Civics. Elementary text-book taken up and com- 
pleted, or subject combined with history, as in 
Grade VII. 

Language as in Grade VII., with special attention to 
forensics.^ 

Other exercises as before. 

The gradation of the curricuhim just outHned may be 
called " ideal " only in the sense that it will probably 
not be realized in actual practice. But a critical study 
of it will show, it is believed, its adaptability to almost 
any local conditions. If the school is made up mainly 
of young- pupils, the higher grades of work will not be 
needed, and more time can be given to the lower. If the 
school has pupils properly classifiable in each grade, the 
alternation of some of the heaviest work of the upper 
three grades may be practiced.^ Classes may recite on 
alternate days, or some grades may be organized only 

' Roark's "Method in Education," p. 318. 

= Consult the "Report of the Committee of Twelve" (N. E. A., 1885), 
p. 94, et seq.; Revised Course of Study, Ills., introduction; County Super- 
intendents' Monthly (Fremont, Neb.), vol. 3, p. 8; vol. 5, p. 296. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 37 

in alternate }'ears. If the school is over-crowded, as is 
the case in many districts of the South, where one teacher 
often has charg-e of from forty-five to seventy-five pupils, 
and the community will not or can not provide for a 
salaried assistant, the plan of pupil help (the Lancas- 
terian system) may be very profitably employed. See 
page 69. 

(c) Taking Charge 

The following suggestions may seem unnecessary, but 
they have proved helpful to more than one young and 
inexperienced teacher, and when it is remembered that 
from a fourth to a third of the teachers who go into the 
schoolroom each year are there for the first time as 
teachers, no apolog}^ seems needed for introducing these 
matters into this division of the subject, designed prima- 
rily for the teachers of elementary rural schools. 

Selecting a Boarding Place. — Even the selection of a 
boarding place calls for the exercise of care on the part 
of the teacher going into a community for the first time 
to make his home there through a term of school. 

He should remember that he must be a hard-working 
student, and therefore needs quiet surroundings, a private 
room well lighted and heated, and an atmosphere of 
culture, in which to spend his time when not in the 
schoolroom. He owes it, then, to himself and to his 
pupils to secure accommodations with a family that can 
fully meet these reasonable requirements, a family of 
substantial means, of unquestioned standing in the com- 
munity, whose members care at least as much for books 
and magazines as for " parties " and other neighbor- 
hood excitements. 

Getting Acquainted. — In states where the directors 
(or trustees) are required by law to visit the parents of 



38 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

the district before school opens, the teacher should, if 
possible, go with them. But, while it is better for the 
teacher to be in company with the school officials when 
visiting the parents for the first time, still if he must go 
alone he had much better do so than not to call upon the 
parents at all before school opens. A grave drawback 
to the highest efficiency of the rural school is the lack 
of acquaintanceship, and therefore of sympathy and co- 
operation, between parents and teacher. The tactful 
teacher can do much, by this preliminary visiting, to win 
the parents from the attitude of indifference, not to say 
suspicion or semi-hostility, with which they are apt to 
start their children into a new term of school under 
an untried teacher. 

While on this topic it is well to say that the visiting 
of parents by the teacher should not stop with this. It 
should be done from time to time throughout the term, 
not in any formal or perfunctory way, but cordially, 
sympathetically, helpfully. The proper carrying out of 
this suggestion will smooth away many a wrinkle. 

Although no one would care to see a revival of the old 
custom of the teacher's *' boarding 'round," yet it af- 
forded excellent opportunities for the blending of home 
and school influences, and for extending the teacher's 
helpfulness beyond the schoolroom. 

Inspection of Grounds and Buildings. — Before be- 
ginning the work of the term the teacher will do wisely 
to see that all promised repairs to the schoolhouse and 
grounds have been made, and that everything, within and 
without, has been put into proper condition for a good 
opening of the school. He should especially examine 
the water supply, the closets, and the blackboards. 

Opening School: the First Day. — There is only one 



THE RIRAL SCHOOL 39 

other day. the last, that is more important than the first 
one of the term. To hegin well is to diminish greatly 
the possible wear and tear of school work, by engaging 
interest and inhibiting disorder from the first. To end 
well is to secure pardon for many errors and shortcom- 
ings that may have marked the passing of the term. To 
close brilliantly after a whole term of successful work, is 
to " set " psychologically the results of that work, as the 
dyer " sets " a color. 

For the first day of school the teacher, especially if he 
be new in that community and most especially if he be 
also assuming charge of his first school, must make, be- 
forehand, most careful and detailed plans. No one can 
more quickly or surely detect inability to handle a situa- 
tion than children, and if the teacher shows incapacity 
and confusion during the first half hour of school it will 
take him many anxious days to get matters well in hand, 
if indeed he can do so at all. 

The best possible remedy for the embarrassment which 
the new teacher can not avoid feeling is, in addition to 
having a clear, definite plan and adhering to it, to lose 
his scIf-coiiscioiis)icss in a genuinely sympathetic inter- 
est in the pn'pils. 

The teacher must be at the schoolhouse early on the 
first day, and meet each pupil at the door or on the play- 
ground, with something pleasant to say and with sincere 
interest in whatever individualizes him. Particularly 
must care be taken to learn names ; nothing else gives 
the teacher quite such a ready hold upon a pupil as to 
be able without hesitation to call his name correctly from 
the first, and to show quick sympathy with whatever 
idiosyncrasy he has. 

The teacher's plan for the first day should include (i) 



40 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

well conducted opening exercises of song, devotions, and 
a short, inspiring talk; (2) the prompt assignment of 
every pupil to new and interesting work; (3) the con- 
ducting of regular recitations, at least during the after- 
noon ; (4) the quiet assumption that everything will go 
smoothly; and (5) the calm but prompt suppression of 
the first tendencies to disorder. If such a plan can be 
successfully carried out the first day the battle is more 
than half won. 

No matter if the teacher closes the first day in a con- 
dition bordering on nervous collapse, it should be his 
pleasure as it certainly is his duty, to take care that every 
pupil has made at least two recitations, and goes home 
feeling that his personality has been recognized, ready 
to say of the new teacher " He'll do." 

(d) Conducting the School 

The problem of successfully conducting the school is 
in the main, one for the teacher to solve alone. No mat- 
ter what may be the material equipment of the school, 
no matter how carefully the plan of grading has been 
formulated, no matter how earnest and sympathetic the 
community may be in helping, the school will be a fail- 
ure, if the teacher has not power and will to make things 
work together for success. It is for the teacher to re- 
move, as far as possible, all provocations to disorder, and 
to cultivate assiduously everything that helps good order 
and good work. Upon this point are focused all the 
efforts of educational economy for the individual school. 

Granting to correct method all the importance to which 
it is justly entitled, still the fact remains that the proper 
management of the school is even more important. The 
best method of teaching a given subject can not take 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 4I 

effect upon a mismanaged school ; but pupils trained to 
good school economies, good school habits, by proper 
management, have that which will be of far more value 
to them than merely knowledge of the branches studied. 
Pupils trained to habits of attention, industry, prompti- 
tude, and accuracy, will learn, method or no method. It 
is the inability to do economical work, to grasp and ad- 
minister details, and to get their pupils to do so, that 
causes so many teachers to fail, just as it causes people 
in any other business to fail. 

General Principles of Management 

The Less " Machinery " the Better. — The school 
should run with as little machinery as possible, and that 
little must go very smoothly, without creak or jar. All 
routine movements must become automatically correct 
early in the term. 

Relations of Teacher and Pupils. — The teacher 
must stand to the pupil as a sympathetic, kindly, 
wise and helpful friend. He should begin the term by 
eliminating harshness and suspicion ; as certainly as he 
assumes that the pupils are ready and anxious to do wrong, 
so certainly will they do what seems to be expected of 
them. Let the assumption be that the boys and girls 
will behave well, and will work if their work is attrac- 
tive and helpful ; let it be taken for granted that, unless 
the physical or psychical environment causes irritation, 
the conduct of the pupils will be that of well-conducted 
busy people anywhere. Very much is to be gained by 
this attitude of the teacher. If he will, from the first 
moment of contact with his pupils, put the stress upon 
happy activity, upon the icork and their common interest 
in it, and not upon his own authority as a sort of police- 



42 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

man, the most difficult problem of the school will be al- 
most solved. 

By intelligent sympathy, by quick appreciation of the 
pupil's difficulties and capacities, by the exhibition of a 
genuine enthusiasm for the work of the school, by court- 
eous bearing, having in kindly respect each child's per- 
sonality, the teacher can have the spirit of the school 
ivith him instead of against him, can create an atmos- 
phere which the evil doer will find hard to breathe. 

No Rules. — One way of simplifying school govern- 
ment is to publish no " rules." When a list of rules is 
read and posted up, the ingenuity of at least some of the 
pupils is stimulated thereby to devise the doing of things 
that are not prohibited by the rules but which are, never- 
theless, infractions of good order and good work. The 
teacher's hands are tied by his " rules," for if the things 
named therein are punishable, then any school boy's logic 
is equal to positing the converse, that things not named 
therein are not punishable. Every child old enough and 
with sense enough to go to school at all knows how to 
behave there, and needs no " rules " to tell him. 

Unhampered by rules, the teacher is free to decide 
each case of order upon its individual merits. 

The Teacher's Example. — The fact can hardly 
have too much iteration, that the personality of the 
teacher is the most potent factor in the making or spoil- 
ing of the school. If the teacher is tardy often, no 
amount of prodding will make the pupils come on time. 
If the teacher lounges behind his desk, and is indifferent 
to neatness in his personal appearance, the pupils will 
sprawl and be untidy. If the teacher is rude, or boorish, 
or discourteous, the pupils are thereby deprived of an 
opportunity to grow into good manners. Unless the 



THE RURAL SCHOOL. 43 

teacher is alert, active, enthusiastically interested, and has 
some exact scholarship, if only in an elenienlary way, 
the pupils will work perfunctorily, getting nothing but a 
little superficial book knowledge, which amounts to no 
more than a thin veneer. 

But. above all, or rather superadded to all, the teacher 
must have love for his pupils and for his work ; without 
this, even having all the others, he is sounding brass and 
a tinkling cymbal. 

Self-government the only Real Government. — It 
must not be forgotten for an instant that the aim of the 
public school is to produce good citizens, and that the 
good citizen in a republic must be able to behave well. 
It is a truism that ninety-nine hundredths of the business 
of courts and civil ofBcers would be eliminated if every 
one in the community could or would govern himself, his 
impulses, emotions, appetites. All the crime that is com- 
mitted in society is directly traceable to a lack of self- 
control. What is true of the individual is true of the 
state ; a free, self-governing state can not exist except as 
it is made up of free, self-governing individuals — free 
through conformity to law, self-governing through sub- 
jection of motive to the dominance of moral will. 

It is the business of the teacher, therefore, to train his 
pupils into habits of self-control and ready obedience, a 
self-control and an obedience that shall become more and 
more automatic as time goes on. 

Self-government through Motives. — Conduct, either 
of child or of adult, is the result of motives. The reason 
for any course of action is always to be found in the mo- 
tive that prompted it. 

It is precisely at this point that the teacher gains most 
from a practical psychology, a psychology that uses the 



44 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT. 

school room as a laboratory. If he can but know the 
motives of his pupils he can play upon them as upon an 
instrument. The teacher's rule of action here must be, 
Appeal always to the highest motive to zvhich the pupil 
will respond. That motive in one case may be love of 
approbation, in another fear of ridicule, in another per- 
sonal pride, in another ambition, in another, perhaps, fear 
of physical pain. The highest possible motive to right 
action is the Tightness of the action; the lowest possible 
is the fear of punishment. Between these extremes the 
teacher must range, always striving to lift each pupil to 
a habitual responsiveness to the highest possible for him. 

Punishments 

It is far better so to conduct a school as not to need to 
punish at all, and it is very often quite easy to do so. 
But under no circumstances must the pupils be allowed 
to conclude that punishment of all kinds has been wholly 
eliminated. In no other matter is a more careful study 
of the individual pupil needed than in adapting punish- 
ments to the results sought. Here is another reason 
for having no set rules for the school ; punishment in 
school must be fitted not so much to the transgression 
as to the transgressor, and fixed rules would not admit 
of this. 

Punishment by Deprivation. — One chief aim of 
school training is, as was set forth in a preceding para- 
graph, to give the pupil self-control. Self-control con- 
sists, practically, in denying one's self an immediate 
object of desire in order to obtain a greater satisfaction 
later. Punishment, then, should consist, whenever this 
. is possible, in some form of deprivation ; when the child 
has learned that he can not enjoy both the immediate 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 45 

and the remote good, and that the remote good is better, 
and well worth sacrificing the near one for, he has had 
his first lesson in self-control. 

When it is said that punishment should usually take 
the form of deprivation there is given a reason why 
under no circumstances should any school duty be as- 
signed as punishment. The wise teacher prefers to man- 
age so that school duties, even though difficult, should 
be looked upon as privileges, and the denial of a share 
in them as a deprivation. It is by no means so difficult 
as it might seem to teachers who have never tried the 
plan, to bring the school to a level where it shall be 
deemed a punishment to refuse a pupil permission to 
recite or to take part in some other exercise. Surely 
many, if not all, of the exercises of the school can be 
made so full of interest and value that to be shut out 
from any of them shall be felt as a deprivation. 

Corporal Punishment. — In all that has been said so 
far no mention has been made of w^hipping. Present 
sentiment everywhere, and in some places law, is 
strongly against this mode of punishment, and the argu- 
ments against it are familiar to everyone. But the fact 
remains that some children can not be made to respond 
to any higher motive than fear of a sound whipping. 
Such punishment is very rarely needed, but the bare pos- 
sibility of it is often a wholesome deterrent, and no 
teacher can afford to let it be understood that whipping 
is abolished. 

Purposes of Punishment. — Punishment has two pur- 
poses or aims — (i) to reform the offender, (2) to deter 
others from transgressing. In the latter respect it dif- 
fers from many other forms of discipline, using discipline 
in its broad and true meaning, for the effect of most 



46 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

disciplinary measures should be positive, encouraging 
directly to right doing, rather than negative, merely de- 
terring from wrong doing. 

The Teacher's Relation to Punishment. — The teacher 
must, as far as possible, in administering punishment, take 
the attitude of an impersonal agent of law. Law-break- 
ing must be followed by correction, as cause is followed 
by efifect ; the teacher is simply the medium through which 
correction comes close after evil-doing. He must make 
the offender feel that punishment is the necessary and 
inevitable result of any infraction of the law inherent in 
school life, and must make it plain that the law is in the 
real nature of things and is not a " rule " made by the 
teacher. Much of helpful suggestion upon this point will 
be found in the chapter on " Moral Education " in Spen- 
cer's Essay on Education.^ 

Arousing and Sustaining Interest 

But it was the mistake of the older educationists to 
suppose that " school management " is chiefly a matter of 
discipline — using discipline in the narrow sense of re- 
straints and punishments. Discipline in its broader, truer 
sense has a comparatively late acceptance ; and yet long 
before Herbart many teachers knew that the best " man- 
agement," the best economy of work in the individual 
school, is through the pupils' interests ; but all teachers 
have known this and have been helped by it since Her- 
bart's doctrines have become everybody's. 

The Doctrine of Interest.- — As at present held by 

'See also "New York Teachers' Monograph" for March, 1900; While's 
"School Management," p. 190; Tompkins' "School Management," p. 157; 
Pedagogical Seminary, 6. 

^ See Herbart's " Outlines of Educational Doctrine," Chs. IV. and V., 
Sec. II.; DeGarmo's "Herbart and the Herbartians," Ch. V.; "Interest 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 47 

those who have thought — and fought — their way through 
the mass of talking and writing upon the subject, tlie doc- 
trine of interest may be stated in two propositions : ( i ) 
that the interests with which the child begins school life 
must be used as a starting point from which to direct his 
activities; (2) that the teacher must use all means to 
arouse and sustain the pupil's interest in the work he has 
to do. The doctrine should not be construed to mean, 
as some of its over-zealous advocates have claimed, that 
the child's interests are to be the guides all the way, and 
that nothing is to be required of him in which he feels 
no interest. The genuinely disciplinary value of drudg- 
ery must not be lost sight of — real, downright drudgery. 
This simply means that it is not always the immediate 
interest that must govern ; that frequently the remote 
interest must prevail over the present impulse. How- 
ever distasteful the task, it must be done willingly because 
of a strong and inspiring interest in that to which the 
drudgery leads. 

Neither should teachers fall into the error of mistaking 
mere evanescent and artificially induced impulses for 
genuine interest. Such impulses are only superficial tick- 
lings of the mind and afford no real motive or direction 
to fruitful activity. There is no more ghastly sight than 
a room full of children galvanized into a feeble alertness 
by the palaver and gesticulations of a harassed teacher 
with a professional waxen grin, simulating an interest 
she never feels. 

Classes of Interests. — The genuine interests are those 
that are rooted in the perception of utility, the perception 
of causality, the pleasure of achievement, the enjoyment 

As Related to Will," Second Supplement to the Herbartian Year Book, 
1895; Educational Review, 11: 146; Ziller's " Grundlegung zur Lehre vom 
erz. Unterricht." 



48 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

of the beautiful, and the various forms of the social 
instinct. 

Any pupil does better work for understanding the ap- 
pHcation, the utility, of the subjects studied. If this fact 
were only made the basis of curriculum planning the 
result would be the elimination of much that has had a 
prominent place for decades, and a setting of much else 
in a different perspective. 

One of the chief pedagogical values of nature study 
is the challenge it constantly offers to the desire to know 
the ivhy and the hoiv — the causes and reasons of things. 
If this desire be even slightly stimulated and directed it 
grows stronger through life and leads ultimately to the 
heights of research and philosophy. 

The most unfailing and ever deepening well-spring of 
true interest is the joy of achievement, of doing some- 
thing for the sake of doing it — of doing it well for the 
sake of doing it well ; the pleasure of knowing in order 
to know, of overcoming resistance for the sake of having 
conquered. Until the teacher can smite the rock of indif- 
ference and apathy and cause the love of work for work's 
sake to gush forth, he may not enter into his rightful 
heritage. School work should not be put down to the 
level of the pupils' superficial interests, but their deeper 
interests should be lifted to the level of duty. It is crim- 
inal to remove all distasteful tasks from the school life, 
for in that way is the child enfeebled and unfitted for the 
stress of life beyond the school. 

As already indicated (and no chance must be let pass 
for putting stress upon the matter), the school yard, the 
schoolhouse, and the furnishings of the room should all 
be of such kind as to foster the aesthetic interests of pupils 
and teacher. 



THE RIR.-IL SCHOOL 49 

But all these are iiuli\iilual interests, and to comple- 
ment them and make them wholly sane and safe there 
must also be cultivated the social interests, the right out- 
working of which fits the man or woman for the func- 
tions of citizenship. Civic pride, true patriotism, a broad 
altruism, all these must be given soil and air in which 
to flourish mightily, else the public school fails of its 
highest duty. How immeasurably more work for the 
teacher to do than merely to " hear recitations ! " 

There is no surer way to set the feet of the young 
upon the road that leads to learning, to power, and to 
character than by keeping alive in all its freshness and 
vigor the capacity to become interested which, as children, 
they have in such marked degree. 

But the pupils' interests can not always be aroused by 
direct efforts to reach them through the content of the 
studies ; and even if they could, other means should be 
availed of as well. Each interest should be multiple, and 
should be called out by contact of the pupil's life with as 
many wholesome things as possible. Therefore not only 
should the subject-matter used as a basis of instruction 
be presented objectively and in a way to make the pupil 
see its value for practical life, but other matters than 
those found in the usual prescribed school course of study 
should be introduced frequently and freshly. 

Opening Exercises. — It is very regrettable that many 
schools neglect so simple and efficient a means of interest- 
ing the pupils as daily opening exercises afford. When 
carefully planned and intelligently carried out they con- 
stitute an effective remedy for tardiness and irregularity 
of attendance ; they can be made so attractive that the 
pupils will let nothing get in the way of prompt attend- 
ance upon them. With intelligent preparation on the part 

Roark's Econ. — 4 



50 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

of the teacher the school can be made, for the first quarter 
of an hour each day, a sort of psychic storage battery in 
which to lay up enough power to facilitate greatly the 
day's work. The following may be taken as a type of 
these exercises, which should be varied frequently and 
made piquant and fresh. 

Program of Opening Exercises for a Monday Morning 

A song by the school. 

Reading of the Parable of the Talents, with comments, by the 
teacher. 

Repetition of the first six verses of Proverbs 13, by the school, 
led by the teacher. 

Two minutes' talk by the teacher upon the week's motto (writ- 
ten on the board) : " It pays to do more than you are paid to 
do." 

Music on the violin, by an invited guest. 

A report of the chief news of the last week, made by an eighth- 
grade pupil previously appointed for that duty. 

Announcements and special directions for the day's work, by 
the teacher. 

An analysis of this type will show several valuable 
elements of economy. 

Devotional Exercises. — Where state law or local op- 
position does not prevent, the Scripture reading should 
be a regular feature of the program, because of its cul- 
tural and ethical value, to say nothing of the need of 
simple religious teaching, for the lack of which public 
schools have been so criticised. 

Mottoes. — An excellent practice of the old-time school 
which the latter-day school should not permit to fall into 
disuse is the placing of mottoes or proverbs before the 
pupils. There is much testimony to the value of this 
practice ; men and women grown declare the influence 
exerted by the motto in the copy book or on the black- 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 5 1 

board, which, catching the idle eye of childhood, has sunk 
into the sub-consciousness, and has there touched the 
spriui^s of character. The teacher will do well to have a 
different motto written on the board in some fixed place 
every week, calling the attention of the wdiole school to it 
with a few pointed comments or illustrations.^ Biograph- 
ical illustrations are especially good, incidents showing 
the influence the principle of the motto has exerted upon 
the work of some well-known man or woman. The 
personal element always holds the interest of young 
people. 

Music. — In aildition to its high cultural worth, a piece 
of music rendered, even crudely, by some one not a mem- 
ber of the school has two values ; it serves to break the 
routine of the school and to awaken interest more than if 
given by the teacher or a pupil, and it identifies the com- 
munity wdth some part of the work of the school. This 
latter service can hardly be overestimated. When some 
one outside the school is asked to speak, to sing, to play, 
or otherwise to contribute something to the special exer- 
cises, not only the friends of the one thus contributing 
take a new interest in the school, but the whole com- 
munity awakens to a sense of sharing in the work the 
teacher is trying to do. The teacher will, of course, 
always be at pains to make the public feel welcome at all 
school exercises, especially at those which open the school 
each day and at those which close the week. 

Current Events. — By nothing, outside of the regular 
class work, can the interests of the pupils be more surely 
or profitably quickened and broadened than by the discus- 
sion of " current events." Such discussion should con- 
stitute a part of the usual work in the classes in geog- 

^ Refer to White's " School Management," p. 293. 



52 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

raphy, history, and civics ; but it will prove profitable to 
have some advanced pupil, a good, discriminating reader 
of the news, give on each Monday morning an outline of 
the chief events of tlie preceding week, which shall serve 
both as a resume of what the school may already know, 
and as a guide to the current reading of the coming week. 
So rapidly has this feature of school work grown in favor 
that there are a dozen or more news publications in this 
country now, designed exclusively for use in schools. It 
is well to have the pupils feel that there is something of 
value they can do for the school as an organism — some- 
thing besides " saying lessons," and this reporting of the 
news they can do well and with profit. 

If there are any variations to be made in the usual 
program, or special announcements of any kind to be 
made, the close of the opening exercises, when every- 
body's attention is alert, is a good time to make them. 

At the end of a quarter of an hour spent as suggested 
in the last few paragraphs, the whole school is refreshed 
and brightened for the daily tasks, and the work goes 
much more sm.oothly than if it be taken up without any 
opening exercises. This feature of school work needs 
most careful and intelligent planning. 

The central theme of the program shown on page 50 is 
" current events," and this theme may be used every 
Monday. Some topic taken from elementary science may 
be the central theme for Tuesday, one from literature 
for Wednesday, and so on through the week. 

Daily Closing Exercises. — While it is not expedient 
or desirable to have special exercises with which to close 
the school every day, still it is well to have a regular 
formal closing of the day's work, and to have occasionally 
special exercises, as simple and brief as possible. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 53 

Before the pupils are dismissed in the afternoon they 
should be brought to " attention " (sitting squarely in 
the seat, facing the teacher), and then the teacher may 
give a word or two of comment on the day's work just 
finished, or upon the conduct of the school, or as to what 
he wants done the next day ; or he may let them go with 
a simple and hearty " good-bye." Sometimes there may 
be a song, or a concert recitation of a " memory gem," 
or a brief g}^mnastic exercise, or a bit of practice with 
the flag salute. There should be variety and freshness, 
vim, and brevity, so all may go home feeling that school 
is a good place. 

Observance of Special Days. — Every state now makes 
provision for an arbor day, which is observed more or 
less closely by the schools, according to locality and the 
disposition of the teacher. 

But it will be found greatly helpful to observe other 
special days also. " Bird day " is growing in favor, and 
it is well that it is. Local Audubon clubs will gladly 
cooperate in the exercises on such a day, and the occa- 
sion can be made of high value in inculcating a knowledge 
of birds, in showing their protective service, and in culti- 
vating the pupils' humane and aesthetic instincts. The 
following is a suggestive program easily varied to suit 
different schools : 

Program of a Bird Day 

Wall display of colored photographic pictures (with names) 
of the birds most common in the locality/ 

Concert singing by the school of a bird song, found in any 
good school song book. 

Brief statements by different pupils of the economic value of 

' These pictures may be had, at very slipht cost, from the Nature Study 
Publishing Co., Chicago, III. Refer also to Wright's " Citizen Bird," and 
Blanchan's " Bird Neighbors." 



54 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

birds to farms and orchards, with illustrations gained by their 
own observation. 

Reading by the teacher of the state law against the slaughter 
of song and insectivorous birds. (Pointed comments should ac- 
company the reading.) 

Brief descriptions, by pupils, drawn from actual observation, 
of the feeding, nesting, migration, and other habits and charac- 
teristics of the birds of the vicinity. 

Reading or recitation by a seventh-grade pupil of a selection 
from Burroughs's " Birds and Bees." 

Reading or recitation of the following selection, or one similar; 

The Broken Wing. 

In front of my pew sits a maiden, 

A little brown wing in her hat, 
With its touches of tropical azure, 

And the sheen of the sun upon that ! 

Through the bloom-colored pane shines a glory, 
By which the vast shadows are stirred. 

But I pine for the spirit and splendor 
That painted the wing of that bird. 

The organ rolls down its great anthem, 

With the soul of a song it is blent ; 
But for me, I am sick for the singing 

Of one little song that is spent. 

The voice of the preacher is gentle ; 

" No sparrow shall fall to the ground ;" 
But the poor broken wing on the bonnet. 

Is mocking the merciful sound. 

The birthdays of authors, scientists, inventors, and 
others who have added to the world's comfort and happi- 
ness may be observed and celebrated in the same way. 
The dates of such days, and biographical sketches and 
sug-gestive programs, are given in any good period- 
ical publication intended for teachers in the public schools. 
Such exercises should not be too frequent, and the longest 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 55 

program need never oecupy more than an hour, and sel- 
dom need so much time be used. It should not be neces- 
sary to add that every program nnist be carefully and 
thoughtfully prepared beforehand, by both teacher and 
pupils. Let nothing dnii;^. 

To these exercises the public should always be made 
welcome ; parents especially should be cordially urged to 
attend. Xo opportunity should be let pass for getting 
the parents into the schoolroom, so they may come to 
understand and cooperate with the work of the teacher. 

If any teacher reading this section should here say that 
he has no time for such things, it being necessary to spend 
every hour in the " regular grind," let it be said in reply 
that if the'se special exercises be well and judiciously used, 
if the spirit of them be fully entered into, the regular 
grind will go faster and the " grist " will be better. 

Prizes ; Marks ; Reports 

False Incentives. — Prizes of the sort usually given for 
successful work in school are false incentives, taking the 
emphasis off the thing that is good in itself, that is study 
for the sake of knowledge and power, and putting it on 
things that are educationally worthless. But this is not 
to condemn wholly the giving of prizes ; properly man- 
aged they may be made to stimulate effort to a point where 
the child may see for himself the value of work and the 
profit of its results. Prizes should always be so given 
as to stir some deeper and intrinsic interest as soon as 
possible. It is safe always not to give medals, or any- 
thing else valuable in itself, except books. The more the 
attention is drawn to the prize itself and taken off that 
for which the prize stands the more worthless it is as a 
good incentive to effort. An apt illustration of this is 



56 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

found in the Olympic games. Tliey were at their best 
when the prizes were simple wreaths of olive or oak, and 
their decadence was marked by the introduction of costly 
gifts for the victors. 

In any school a card, a bit of ribbon, a simple badge 
with appropriate inscription, or, for older pupils, a whole- 
some book, will be far more serviceable than gold or 
silver medals. To be of the highest value prizes should 
be awarded for the most marked and rapid improvement 
under given conditions, rather than for absolute accom- 
plishment. In this way the stimulus reaches all, and the 
slowest pupil has a chance of being touched with the fire 
of ambition. 

True Incentives. — It is worthy of many repetitions 
that the true incentives to successful work are the pupils' 
own aroused interests in the things about them, in ma- 
terial things and in the facts and relations of their imme- 
diate practical life and of the larger world. These 
interests can best and most surely be aroused through 
the strong, informed, and enthusiastic personality of the 
teacher. 

Marking. — The discussion which, some years ago, 
raged over the matter of marking pupils has decided 
nothing unless it be that marking of some sort can not 
well be dispensed with. The marks may be made with 
" plain figures," in old-fashioned per cents, in letters, in 
symbols, or in voluminous statements of the teacher re- 
garding the psychic condition of the pupil ; but the stub- 
born fact remains that marking of some sort must be 
done. The teacher can not otherwise keep track of the 
pupils' growth or lack of it. In none of the grades, 
however, except those of the third division (seventh and 
eighth grades) should any attempt be made at daily 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 57 

marking'; and not in these is it necessary, if even expedi- 
ent. Marking" may be done most frequently in arithmetic, 
technical grammar and spelling; less frcquentl}- in reading 
and other culture studies. 

Country schools have suffered far more from a lack of 
marking than from an excess of it ; and where schools 
have been harmed by marking it has been due to such 
lack of skill on the part of the teacher as to make the fact 
of marking obtrusively evident to the pupils, and to the 
practice of giving marks almost solely upon examination 
results. 

The best time to mark a pupil upon a piece of work is 
immediately after the work has been done. But unless 
the teacher has acquired enough facility in estimating 
the value of a recitation, and enough skill in handling a 
class, to enable him to mark work as soon as it is done, 
without interrupting the flow of the class interest, he 
had better make his memoranda at some other time, as, 
for example, just after the class is dismissed. 

In addition to recording the results of ordinary recita- 
tions, the results of reviews (which should be frequent 
and spirited) should also be carefully noted. Examina- 
tions should be estimated as only one third, or at most 
one half of the total for a term. 

There should be close marking for absences and tardy 
attendance. Many teachers find it also an admirable plan 
to keep careful account of the pupils' deportment ; but 
under no circumstances should a pupil be marked off in 
scholarship on account of poor deportment; the two 
accounts should be kept carefully separate. 

Making Reports to Parents. — A monthly report of 
the child's progress is due the parent ; and if this is not 
reason enough for sending it, a sufficient one is found in 



58 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

the fact that a report, showing progress or retrogression, 
sent home every month, makes the parents cognizant of 
the work being done by the pupils, and acts, in every 
case, as a spur and incentive to both parents and pupils 
to make that work better. It serves effectively as one 
means of correlating the influences of the home and of 
the school. The report should show " Attendance," 
" Deportment," and " Scholarship," for at least the upper 
four grades. 

School Expositions 

The old-time school " exhibition," with its declama- 
tions, essays, and dialogues, aided much in its day in the 
always needed correlation of school and community. It 
can still be made of great service, but should be used in 
connection with the more modern and effective school 
" exposition." The exhibition was not usually planned 
as a means of showing the results of work done as a part 
of the regular school exercises ; it was intended merely to 
" show off " the pupils and entertain the local public. 
The " exposition," on the other hand, has for its purpose 
to direct critical and appreciative attention to all of such 
regular school work as can be exhibited objectively. The 
exhibition showed off the pupils ; the exposition shows 
their regular work. 

Practice in oral expression should constitute a very 
considerable part of the regular school work, week after 
week. The results of this also can be shown in a modi- 
fied form of the " exhibition," which may be made an 
integral and important part of the exposition plan. 

Preparation of Exposition Material. — One very 
marked advantage of the exposition is that the prepara- 
tion for it is best made as a part of the regular work, and 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 59 

instead of distracting- attention from stndy, as preparation 
for a school " entertainment " is sure to do, it serves to 
concentrate attention and eiTort upon the ordinary duties 
of the school. The method of preparing and collecting 
exposition material is simple : 

In all nature-study exercises there are collected many 
specimens in course of regular work, pressed flowers and 
plants, fruits, seeds ; clays, soils, minerals ; insects in vari- 
ous stages of development ; and some of each pupil's best 
of all these should be laid aside by the teacher about 
every two weeks, and kept for exposition purposes. 
There will also be pieces of simple apparatus made by the 
pupils to illustrate elementary physics and chemistry, and 
these, too, should be kept in good order for use on exposi- 
tion day. 

In geography and history, the outlines, topic lists, brief 
descriptive essays, flat and relief maps, and illustrative 
drawings, all of which are produced as a part of the 
regular school work, make most excellent exposition 
material. 

In arithmetic and other mathematics, model solutions, 
mathematical drawings, and mathematical models made 
by the pupils from wood, clay, or cardboard, furnish val- 
uable exhibits. 

Written work in all subjects, outlines, diagrams in 
grammar, illustrated essays, and drawings and hand 
work of any and all kinds, done as a part of school duty, 
should furnish many typical specimens to be put on 
display. 

Correct methods of teaching involve the preparation of 
all the material suggested above, and it remains only to 
collect the best specimens of each pupil's work at stated 
intervals and to file it away. The collection of material 



6o ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

should begin in the second week of school, and the pupils 
should understand from the beginning what the material 
is being collected for. If the exposition idea is a new 
one in the community, it will be well for the teacher to 
show some material secured in his last school, or from 
some fellow worker, so that the pupils may get the idea 
and be stimulated by it from the first. 

Arousing Emulation and Ambition. — As the material 
is collected from time to time the best specimens should 
be shown to the whole school, with comments by the 
teacher. Teachers from different districts can also ex- 
change good specimens among themselves, at association 
meetings, and use the specimens thus secured to show 
their pupils " what other people are doing." 

The county superintendent should secure the best ma- 
terial from each school in his county, and have it properly 
displayed at the county institute or some other gath- 
ering of teachers and patrons. The best from each county 
should be shown at the state educational meeting, and the 
best from the rural schools of each state should find its 
way to the national meeting, and help to constitute a dis- 
tinctively " Rural School Exhibit." If pupils and teach- 
ers can look forward to such a possibility as the outcome 
of their daily work, that work will surely be better done, 
and opportunities will be sought for enlarging its scope. 
The value of such exhibits is set forth in a series of 
articles in the Educational Review, Vol. 5. 

Exposition Forms. — Although the teacher who is 
really in earnest about making a success of his exposition 
will do so with any kind of raw material, yet it is very de- 
sirable to have map blanks, paper, etc., uniform, not only 
throughout the individual school, but all over the county. 
The less attention is diverted from the work by the varia- 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 61 

tions of the paper on Nvhich it is done, the better ean a 
just comparison between different pupils and different 
schools be made. Paper used for written work should 
have printed headings, and these, when filled out, should 
show plainly the facts that any careful student of the 
work of schoojs wants to know. Below is given a sug- 
gestive heading for papers on which written work is to 
be done. The size of the sheet should be foolscap. 

CARROLL SCHOOL 

District No. 8. Clinton Co., Penn. 

Teacher 



Grade.... Branch Subject Pupil Age.... 

Date 

Every piece of work should, without exception, show 
at least the grade and age of the pupil. ^ 

Time and Place of Exposition. — The exposition 
should mark the close of school, and should take place 
at the schoolhouse. Suggestions for a detailed program 
are given under the topic " Closing the School/' on p. 79. 

The foregoing topics, belonging to a discussion of the 
general management of the school, leave still some other 
suggestions to be made in detail. These will fall under 
the heads " Management in the Room " and " Manage- 
ment on the Playground." 

Management in the Room 

The chief problem, many teachers think the only prob- 
lem, which confronts the teacher in the schoolroom is 
that of maintaining good order. Good order in the room 
is that condition of things under which each pupil does 
good work without interfering with anybody else. This 

1 See Holbrook's " Xew ^lethodT^^ 



62 ORGANIZATIOX AND MANAGEMENT 

condition is modified by either physical or mental influ- 
ences, or both. 

Physical Causes of Disorder. — Disorder is often oc- 
casioned by untoward physical conditions, over some of 
which the pupils can have no control, and the teacher, 
tmfortunately, often but little. The gravest of these are 
crowded or otherwise uncomfortable seats, poor ventila- 
tion, too high or too low temperature, the presence of the 
stove in the middle of the room (idle pupils love to hide 
behind a stove), unshaded windows, slamming shutters 
and rattling sashes, creaking doors, and the presence of 
the water bucket in the room. The mere enumeration 
indicates the remedies. 

Pupils Must Be Comfortable. — The whole question 
of order or disorder arising from physical conditions can 
be easily solved by the formula : Pupils must be made 
comfortable. The teacher who knows the value of little 
comforts and the cvunulative force of small annoyances 
will see to it that an even temperature is maintained, that 
seats and desks are at the right height, that floors are 
swept and furniture dusted daily, that sunny windows are 
screened, that rusty hinges are oiled, in short, that every- 
thing which annoys the eye or ear or muscle, or fur- 
nishes a temptation to idleness or unnecessary move- 
ment, is removed or reduced to a minimum. 

Disorder also arises from psychic causes and is most 
frequently due to tlie personality and manner of the 
teacher, to his harsh and uncultured voice, to his lack of 
self-control, to his deficient scholarship, to the lack of a 
good daily program, and, above all, to the teacher's failure 
so to vary the routine of the school as to azuaken and sus^ 
tain a healthy interest. 

The Teacher's Personality. — In any discussion of 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 63 

\va\s ami means in cnlucation one truth persistentl)' 
tlirusts itself upon us. and that is that successful nianage- 
uient and fruitful method depend, at last, more upon the 
tcacJicr's pi'rsoitality than upon all other things put 
together. This personality impresses itself upon the 
pupils through the teacher's eye and bearing, tone and 
gesture, even through his garb ; and back of all is that 
which is called " personal magnetism," that intangible, 
indefinable something whose existence is very real and 
makes itself very consciously felt. 

The controlling and inspiring force of a clear, pene- 
trating eye, a calm, modulated voice, a self-controlled 
manner, an air of reserve force, can not be measured, but 
these count for more than all the birch rods or loud 
ordering about. It is this fact more than any other that 
makes whatever value there is in the familiar assertion 
that the teacher is born, and not made by normal schools 
or pedagogical lectures. 

The Teacher's Scholarship. — Sound scholarship 
(soiDid scholarship, not necessarily extensive scholarship) 
very largely increases the teacher's personal force. Pu- 
pils who themselves care but little for learning respect it 
in the teacher, when it is, so far as it goes, sound and 
accurate. Scholarship inspires confidence. The teacher 
must know thoroughly what he assumes to know, or the 
pupils will soon come to scorn him as a pretender; then 
good government is at an end. 

To scholarship in the strict sense should be added as 
much general information as the teacher can acquire. He 
must meet each class full of his subject and competent to 
give many illustrations and explanations not found in the 
text-books. The test of a teacher's minimum sufficiency 
of knowledge is his ability to dispense zvith a book while 



64 ORGANIZATION- AND MANAGEMENT 

conducting a recitation ; not otlierwise can he inspire, 
refresh, interest, and guide his pupils.^ 

The Daily Program. — The best preventive aga'.nst dis- 
order is a strict adherence to the principle of " definite 
work for each one to do at a definite time, and each one 
doing it at that time." This means, of course, a carefully 
planned and closely followed daily program, which pro^ 
vides both for times of recitation and for times and char- 
acter of other work. A good program calls not only for 
study, but for the study of certain things at certain 
times. 

Fatigue. — The first principle that should govern the 
making of a daily program is : 

The school day should be so divided hctween study, 
recitation, and play that fatigue shall be reduced to a mini- 
mum, and efficiency be brought to its highest level. 

The question of fatigue, which is of such prime impor- 
tance in arranging periods of study and recitation, alter- 
nated with periods of recitation and play, is only begin^ 
ning to receive proper notice in this country. Just how 
long interested attention may be given by children at dif- 
ferent ages, how much application can be required with- 
out injury, how long the periods of rest and play should 
be — these are matters still awaiting accurate determina^ 
tion through careful inductive investigation. The whole 
question is of far less moment in rural schools than in city 
schools. In the country, children are under less restraint, 
have almost unlimited facilities for outdoor exercise, and 
therefore suiTer less from any form of school fatigue than 
is the case in cities. A fuller discussion of the subject, 
therefore, than is needed here will be found under the head 
of the " Administration of the Individual City School." 

^ For further discussion of lesson management see Roark's " Method in 
Education," p. 67, Rule II. 



TUB RURAL SCHOOL 65 

Each tcaolicr must make an iiUcllit^onl study of his nwn 
school as a whole, and of individual pupils, and base his 
daily projjram upon the results of this study. 

In any event, a program should be a living one, and not 
cast-iron. Only three rules can be laid down with any 
positiveness. The first is, the studies and exercises zcliich 
make the sez'ercst tax upon the poivers of concentrated 
attention and abstract thinking should come in the earlier 
morning. Because the younger pupils are able to do but 
little except immediately under the teacher's direction, and 
are sure to be aimlessly restless if not given interesting 
employment as soon as school assembles, they should be 
heard in recitation first, after the opening exercises, and 
should then be assigned to seat w^ork or outdoor activities. 
During the time occupied in recitation by these elementary 
classes the most advanced pupils should be reviewing the 
difficult work prepared the night before, and should then 
be called to recite. The time between the opening of 
school and the first general recess should be mainly occu- 
pied by the recitations of the advanced grades in arithme- 
tic, technical grammar, and history. The lighter work 
and the culture subjects should come mainly in the after- 
noon. 

A second law of the program may be stated mathe- 
matically — weariness is inversely as the square, or even 
the cube, of interest. German writers have made a very 
clear distinction between fatigue, which is a pathological 
condition, mainly physical, and zveariness, which is psy- 
chological and is due mainly to lack of interest. 

A third rule is, there should be frequent rest periods. 

In the rural schools, where the school day is a long one, 
there should be two long recesses, fifteen to twenty min- 
utes each, one to break the morning session, the other the 

Roark's Econ. — 5 



66 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

afternoon, and the noon intermission should be at least 
an hour and a quarter, preferably an hour and a half, in 
length. 

The pupils of the first division, the first three grades, 
should have an outdoor recess also between the first gen- 
eral recess and noon, and would profit by a short one 
between the time of opening and the first general recess. 
If local conditions admit of it, which frequently they 
do not, this division should be dismissed for the day at 
the mid-afternoon recess, if not earlier. 

Suggestive Daily Program. — In the following partial 
program the efifort is made to put into practical working 
form what has been said in the preceding paragraphs. 
The first and last sessions of the day are given in detail. 
The second and third sessions should follow the same 
general plan, the most difficult work of the afternoon 
coming first. 

Study at School. — There are several excellent reasons 
why most of the studying should be done at school. In 
the first place, if the lessons are prepared at home the 
pupils will be idle at least two thirds of the time at school, 
as no grade will spend more than one third of the school 
day in recitation. Again, it is quite as much the business 
of the teacher to show his pupils how to study as it is to 
conduct recitations, and this requires the preparation of 
lessons at school. Finally, if pupils work as they should 
while at school it is hygienically wrong to require work of 
them at home. An excellent rule is, Require no home 
study of pupils below the sixth grade. 

Work of All Grades Indicated in the Program. — The 
program given opposite indicates work for each grade, but 
as a matter of fact the cases are very rare in which any 
rural school will have all grades gomg at once. When 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 



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68 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

it so happens that classes in all or a large number of the 
eight grades must be organized, the teacher is compelled 
to use several expedients in order to save time and do 
effective work with each class. 

Group Work. — In the first place many exercises of 
the school may be participated in at the same time by the 
grades of a group or division, and some exercises by the 
school as a whole. 

Drawing, penmanship, manual training (seat work or 
sloyd) , and calisthenics may occupy the whole school, or 
a large part of it, at the same time. 

The nature-study exercises may better be by divisions 
than by grades ; so may also the vocal music, the language 
work, the reading or literature of the third division at 
least, and the forensic drills. 

Some excellent authorities upon school management 
have even advocated conducting all the work of the rural 
school in a three-group, or, at most, a four-group ar- 
rangement. Programs according to this plan are given 
in the Report of the Committee of Twelve and in White's 
" School Management." No plan of grouping is really 
economical, however, if it necessitates throwing together 
into one class two or more grades in subjects in which 
there is a necessary sequence of topics, as in arithmetic 
and history, for example. 

Alternation. — Under stress of numbers and lack of 
time a teacher is justified in alternating some of the classes 
in the third division, for example, holding recitations in 
arithmetic on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and in 
technical grammar, or composition, on Tuesdays and 
Thursdays. It has been suggested that the alternation be 
by years, so that all the pupils who first enter school in the 
odd years shall, beginning with the third grade, take the 



rilE RURAL SCHOOL 69 

work from there on by alternate years. Under this ar- 
rangement pupils who entered school in 1901 would take 
the work of the third grade after that of the fourth, the 
fifth after the sixth, the seventh after the eighth, and so 
would finish the course from the seventh grade. This 
plan is given in detail in the April, 1901, issue of The 
County Superintendent's Monthly (Fremont, Neb.). 

The objections that obtain against this plan are, how- 
ever, precisely the same as those against conducting all 
classes under the three-group arrangement ; and in addi- 
tion to these objections is the fact that to alternate 
by years would require a more careful keeping of the 
school register than the average teacher can be induced 
to do. 

The Lancaster Plan. — The Bell-Lancaster,^ or Moni- 
torial, plan, although it has never fulfilled the promises 
made for it at the time of its introduction into practical 
scliool management, is altogether the best arrangement 
for an economical administration of the daily program 
in a crowded rural school where but one salaried teacher 
can be employed. This plan provides for putting the 
best pupils of the advanced grades in charge of some of 
the work of the lowest division, and where this is done 
under the careful supervision of the teacher the results 
are excellent. An older student is often much nearer, 
psychologically, to the younger pupils than the teacher 
is, and can therefore appreciate and relieve the younger 
pupils' difficulties. There is less of formalism and con- 
straint between the older and younger pupils than between 
the children and the teacher, and the little people can, 
therefore, often profit more by the instruction of older 
pupils than by the teacher's. The pupils who render 

^Report of the Xat. Commissioner of Ed., '94—3, i: 403; 2: 1153. 



yo ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

assistance under this arrangement are greatly benefited, 
because to teach a subject in even an elementary way 
requires a far better assimilation of it than is needed in 
order to recite successfully. Then, too, the recognition 
of scholarship and trustworthiness which selection as an 
assistant gives is justly regarded by the pupil as an honor, 
and the effect upon his self-respect and character is always 
good. It has often happened that bright boys and girls 
whose time was not fully occupied with their own work 
have been saved from becoming disturbers of good order 
by being selected as helpers and thus made responsible in 
a sort of official way for the right conduct of the school. 

The teacher should be very careful in his selection of 
helpers, and should exercise a close oversight of their 
work. He should meet them frequently, after or before 
school hours, and go over the lessons with them, giving 
them kindly counsel and direction, and in doing so will 
discover that he is himself benefited professionally by the 
effort to teach others how to teach. 

Extra Branches. — Another question affecting the 
proper adjustment of the daily program is that of extra 
branches, which are sometimes called for by older pupils. 
Shall the teacher give instruction in any subjects not called 
for by the common school law? The answer should be 
yes, with one proviso, and that is the teaching of extra 
branches shall never encroach upon the time needed for 
the required subjects. If there are a few pupils suffi- 
ciently advanced to undertake the study of two or three 
branches outside the common-school list the teacher 
should do all he can to encourage them in doing higher 
work. He himself will reap great benefit from such 
work; but the greater reward will be the satisfaction of 
having set young feet in the way of higher learning. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 71 

Individual Work. — Some years ago there was discus- 
sion of what was known as the " Pueblo plan " of indi- 
vidual work,^ as opposed to class work. All that is of 
any value in the " plan " can be secured for the rural 
school by the teacher's using an hour not oftener than 
once a week in which, the regular recitations being sus- 
pended, to go about the room from pupil to pupil in order 
to give individual help, and to show pupils hoiv to study. 
The day on which this individual help is given should be 
movable, so the pupils may not come to look for this fea- 
ture at a certain time. When time presses unusually, this 
individual help may be given outside of school hours. 

Calling and Dismissing by Signals. — Orderly pre- 
cision of movement about the room and between the room 
and playground is not a matter of necessity in the country 
school as in the city school, but its value is so great that 
the rural school should take full advantage of it. To 
march to and from class and to and from play at definite 
signals is a splendid drill in orderly, expeditious move- 
ment, and aids greatly in forming and fixing the habit 
of maintaining good order at all times. The pupils soon 
come to like the marching and thus their interest in the 
school is increased. And in addition to these advantages 
it saves time. 

All signals within the room should be given quietly. 
The call to recitation and dismission therefrom 
may be made by the low counting of " one — two — 
three," or by simple movements of the head or 
hand. The first signal means " position in seat," with 
material in hand and feet in the aisle ; the second 
means " rise and pass," and the third " sit." When dis- 
missing the school for recess or to go home, " position in 

^Educational Review, 7: 154; 8: 84. 



y2 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

the seat " means to come to attention, each one sitting 
squarely in the seat and looking- at the teacher. Then the 
teacher gives directions and advice 'about the play and 
conduct on the playgrounds, or sums up the day's work 
in a few words of commendation or of regret for a day 
not quite up to the standard. 

Management on the Playground 

The " Play Line." — It is well to have an imaginary 
line about fifteen feet from the door, and require all 
pupils to walk quietly between that line and the door, 
whether coming in or going out. This simple little 
requirement prevents crowding and fussing about the 
door, and strengthens the habit of order in the house. 

The Teacher on the Playground. — As a rule the 
teacher should be on the playground whenever the pupils 
are : first, so that he himself may get needed exercise in 
the open air ; second, that he may discharge duties no less 
binding than those which claim his attention within doors. 
He should direct the pupils' activities and look after the 
order as carefully as in the schoolroom. 

The matters that need most careful watching at " play- 
time " are (i) quarrels, (2) dangerous play, (3) tres- 
passing. 

Since the pupils, when on the playground, are somewhat 
less under the immediate control of the teacher than when 
within the room, order must be provided for there even 
more than in the house, by a careful and patient working 
out of the truth that real government after all can come 
only from unthin. Control, to be effective in the long 
run, must be self-control. 

Quarrelling. — Nothing will effectively prevent quar- 
rels and even fights upon the playground, except constant 



THE RURAL SCHOOL y^ 

alertness on the part of the teacher, wlio must he ahle 
to scent a coming' quarrel almost hefore it has begun to 
brew, and a long and patient inculcation of the old, souml 
truth that it is usually more cowardly to fight than to 
refuse to do so. Again and again must it be remembered 
that the only real control is self-control, that " He that is 
slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth 
his spirit than he that taketh a city." If the "fight" 
should prove to be more than an angry scuffle, the bellig- 
erents may be sent promptly home, may be subjected to 
corporal punishment, or even, in extreme cases and when 
the boys are nearly grown, turned over to the local peace 
officers. It will, however, usually prove quite sufficient 
to separate the truculent pair, make them appear ridicu- 
lous to the others, and, later, give each an earnest, 
straightforward talk. 

Dangerous Play. — When a number of healthy, active 
children play together they will surely hit upon some un- 
safe sports. Here again it is impossible to lay down any 
but general rules for the solution of the teacher's prob- 
lems. A safe rule is, " Allow no sports that call for 
mere strength or weight alone ; " and conversely, " En- 
courage games that involve skill as v^ell as strength." 
Games requiring only strength are unsafe, and unfair to 
the weaker, as well as tending to cultivate an admiration 
for mere brute muscle. Games of skill may be success- 
fully played by the weaker pupils, and they cultivate 
quickness of mind. 

The teacher should not only know all the local games 
and sports, but be able to suggest good new ones and to 
show the pupils how to play them. It is as much the 
teacher's business to know the games played on a country 
school playground as to know the multiplication table. 



74 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

Trespassing. — School children's trespassing upon 
gardens or orchards furnishes the teacher occasion for 
especially reenforcing his teaching of civic duty. Here, 
again, the true control must come from within the pupil, 
and springs, in this case, from a cordial acceptance of 
the principle that our privileges end where the rights of 
others begin ; that no one has excuse for interfering with 
the personal or property rights of another. No other 
principle of civic conduct needs so careful inculcation as 
this one. Boys must be made to understand and feel 
that it is not " fun," but simple stealing, to raid orchards, 
or gardens, or hen's nests, even though but little is taken 
and little damage done. They must be taught that it is 
not " sport, " but merely vulgar hoodlumism and selfish 
meanness to throw stones or snowballs at people passing 
along the highway. They must be brought to a realiza- 
tion of the essential lack of patriotism, of real loyalty to 
the school and to the principles of American government, 
in all such misdeeds. 

Coeducation on the Playground. — In the rural schools 
coeducation of boys and girls is an established, whole- 
some fact. The conscious, deliberate separation of the 
sexes in any grade of school is unhealthful and therefore 
unwise, and it is well that conditions prevent the attempt 
in the elementary schools. This coeducation should ex- 
tend to the playground, where the most valuable ameni- 
ties of social life may be taught and illustrated through 
the normal intermingling of boys and girls. In the first 
place, the school yard, be it large or small — or if there 
is no inclosed yard, then whatever area is allotted for 
play — should be marked ofif into three sections, one of 
which, all should clearly understand, is for the use of 
girls exclusively, the opposite one for boys exclusively. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL 75 

and the middle one for both. The matter of placing- to- 
gether will then regulate itself. If either boys or girls 
desire to play to themselves, they do so within their own 
section ; if they desire to play together they do so within 
the section common to both. This is the only regulation 
needed, unless there be special local reasons for additional 
rules. The teacher, being present on the playground 
throughout each intermission, should sympathetically so 
direct the intermingling of boys and girls as to train them 
in the little courtesies due from each sex to the other, and 
thereby secure to them one of the important values of 
coeducation. 

The polite conventions should also be observed, not 
only between boys and girls, but between members of the 
same sex also, during the eating of lunch at the noon 
hour. Attempts to carry out this suggestion will be be- 
set by many difficulties, chief of which will be the anx- 
iety of every child to dispose of lunch as soon as possible 
in order to get to playing. But if the teacher can even 
occasionally get all the pupils to sit down quietly, at the 
same time, in family or neighborhood groups, and eat 
their lunch hygienically and hiirnanly, with observance 
of table courtesies, it will be very helpfully educative. 

The Teacher at Play. — The question as to how much, 
if at all, the teacher should take part in the games of the 
children upon the playground must be answered in each 
case according to local conditions. The teacher should 
at all times be ready to teach a new game, if interest in 
the old games flags, and to introduce acceptable variations 
into those that are familiar ; and to do so necessitates 
some participation in the children's play. At other times 
it is safest, as a rule, for the teacher to watch, with sym- 
pathetic appreciation, the sports of the playground, but 



yd ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

rarely to take part in them. It is too difficult equitably to 
participate as a player, and at the same time to exercise 
over all the authoritative supervision of the teacher. 

Two particular suggestions have been found of value 
in the case of the man teacher : ( i ) he should not take 
part in games of strength and skill, with the larger boys, 
unless he is sure of being victor at least three times out 
of five; (2) he should not act as umpire in any hotly con- 
tested game, unless at the urgent and unanimous request 
of all the players. 

(e) Closing the School 

Throughout the whole term of school the teacher must 
keep steadily in view not only the present good of the 
pupils, but their future growth also ; not only his duties 
to the schools but his wider duty to bring the whole com- 
munity to a growing appreciation of the work and worth 
of the public school. 

The closing weeks and days of school should, there- 
fore, be made to show richer and more convincing results 
than any others ; the work should grow increasingly dif- 
ficult and yet be more successfully and promptly done 
than earlier in the year. There should be none of the 
flabby " letting down " of effort which is too often seen 
in schools near the close of the term, while teachers and 
pupils both count the days till " school is out." The 
last weeks afford the best opportunity for training the 
pupils in persistent work, and the requirements should 
not grow slack, although the work may be given more 
variety. 

The especial aims of the closing week should be the 
intensifying and fixing of past results, the persistent 
stimulation of interest in the pupils and the community, 
and the preparation for a culmination of effort at the 



THE RURAL SCHOOL yy 

close of school. The cliiklren will, of course, carry home 
news of all that is going forward in the school, and in 
direct proportion as they are interested the parents will 
be. Formal announcement of the closing exercises 
should be made to the school several days before they 
occur; and the local paper, if there be one, should be 
asked to repeat and strengthen the invitation to the pub- 
lic to attend these exercises. The teacher will wisely 
seize every good opportunity to extend a personal invita- 
tion to his patrons, and even the pulpit may serve as a 
medium of directing attention to the work of the last 
days of the school ; any minister would be glad to cooper- 
ate in a work so similar in purpose to his own. 

The Exposition. — On p. 58 the suggestion was made 
that the exposition, which is a display of the genuine re- 
sults of pupils' regular work throughout the term, may 
be both the modern exposition and, in part, the old " ex- 
hibition " also. The exposition proper, for which writ- 
ten work, maps, drawings, nature-study collections, etc., 
have been prepared, should be held in the forenoon of the 
last day, and all the exhibits should be got in place the day 
preceding. The heavier material should be placed neat- 
ly on desks and tables, so that each pupil's work will 
be by itself, and will be presented to observation in the 
order of its preparation, that is, each pupil's exhibit 
should show first the work first collected from that pupil, 
and so on through to the last. In no other way can a cor- 
rect estimate of each pupil's progress or lack of improve- 
ment be so readily reached. 

The lighter material, especially maps, drawings, and 
mounted specimens of plants and flowers, should be 
strung on tape or strong cord and placed around the 
room on the walls. 



78 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

Some days previous to the exposition, several of the 
more advanced boys and girls should be appointed to act 
as ushers, and should be drilled carefully in their duties 
of conducting the public through the room, and of ex- 
plaining clearly the nature and purpose- of the work on 
display. General directions must also be given before- 
hand to the school as a whole, and each pupil not an 
usher should be near the exhibit of his own work, ready 
to answer any question about it. 

The value of such a display, carefully inspected by a 
public which may be at first indifferent or adversely 
critical is evident to anyone, but can be fully appreciated 
only by those who have tried the plan here outlined and 
have seen the crowd of visitors become interested and 
then enthusiastic. 

Good results will be all the more marked and per- 
manent if it can be arranged beforehand to make the oc- 
casion a neighborhood holiday, and have a " basket din- 
ner " served on the grounds. After dinner the exposi- 
tion material can be packed away, the best exhibits be- 
ing reserved by the teacher to be put on display later at 
the County Institute, and the room made ready for the 
final exercises, which may be held either in the after- 
noon or at night, according to circumstances. 

The Exhibition and Commencement. — The final pro- 
gram should consist of the " exhibition " feature of the 
exercises, which, while more attractive to most of the com- 
munity than the exposition, can, at the same time, be 
made quite as truly an exhibit of the pupils' work along 
certain very important lines. Every grade should be 
represented upon the program, but the prominent share 
will belong to the pupils who have finished the course 
of study and who are, therefore, celebrating their first 



THE RfRAL SCHOOL 79 

comniencomcnt. Even in states which do not provide by 
law, as nearly all do, for i;"raduaiion from the common- 
school course, this commencement feature can be made 
prominent ; and it should be. so long- as the idea is ke])t 
well to the fore that the work done is simply i)repara- 
tory to higher and better work in some advanced school. 
If possible, some man or woman of scholarship and ex- 
perience, who can speak briefly and pointedly, should be 
secured to close the program, and so to close it that 
everyone present shall be filled freshly with inspiration, 
and aspiration to be and to do. 

Suggestive Program for the Last Day. — In -order to 
summarize the preceding paragraphs, and present their 
substance in concrete form, the following program is 
suggested for the exercises of the last day. It can be 
adapted to the needs and conditions of any school 

10:00 A. M. — The Exposition of the Term's Work. 

Ten minutes' address by the teacher, stating the 
purpose and character of the Exposition, and 
welcoming the public. 

Inspection of the various exhibits, under the di- 
rection of the teacher, ushers, and other pupils, 
until noon. 
12 :oo ^I. — A " Basket Dinner," outdoors if the weather permits. 

This should be made a social feature. 

After dinner, the schoolroom is cleared for the 
afternoon exercises. 
2 :30 P. M. — The Graduation Exercises. 

Music. 

Invocation. 

i\Iusic. 

Brief description of the term's work, by the 
teacher. 

Relation : " The Spanish-American War." 

Essay : " Within the Walls of Pekin." 

Music. 



8o OKGANlZA'l lOX AND MANAGEMENT 

Recitation : Selection from " Widderin's Race" 

(Hayne). 
Oration : Finer than Gold. 
A Dialogue.^ 

Music. 

Debate : " Is it necessary for civilized nations to 

make war upon one another?" 
Music. 

Delivery of certificates or diplomas. 
Dismissal. 

(2) THE CITY SCHOOL 

All the fundamental principles underlying the econom- 
ical organization and administration of the individual 
school in the country are valid also in the case of the in- 
dividual school in the city. Their application needs but 
slight modification to suit the different environment. 
Only such modification will, therefore, be discussed in 
detail in the pages immediately following. 
A. Equipment 
(a) Grounds and Buildings ^ 

The Site. — The paramount considerations that should 
govern the selection of a site are the health, comfort, and 
convenience of the pupils. In cities, each school build- 
ing should be so placed as to stand at least a block away 
from street-car lines and streets on which there is heavy 
traffic, and the streets and alleys in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of the buildings should be paved with asphalt. 
City authorities are hardly beginning, yet, to act upon the 

' Write to F. A. Owens Publishing Co., Dansville, N. Y., for dialogue 
books. 

-Refer to " School Sanitation and Decoration," Burrage & Bailey; 
" School Hygiene," Shaw; Report of the National Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, '93—4, 2} 1301; Proceedings of Nat. Ed. Association, '97, 996; "The 
Sanitary Conditions for School Houses," U. S. Bureau of Ed. Circ. No. 3, 
1891; "Essentials of School Architecture," Bruce; The Outlook, 72: 218. 



THE CITY SCHOOL Rl 

knowledge that all uncouth noises waste nerve energy. 
The building should also be out of reach of the smoke 
and smells of factories ; and great care must be taken to 
have the neighborhood free from the moral contamina- 
tion of saloons, tobacco shops, and disorderly houses. 
The young are so susceptible to the influence of environ- 
ment that, so far as society is responsible, there should 
be nothing with which they come in contact while in 
school that can offend or corrupt either physical or moral 
sense. The Board of Education or the City Council 
should have power, under the city charter, to prohibit 
the establishment of any distracting or contaminating 
industry within two blocks of a school building. 

More Space Needed. — It is entirely safe to say that 
there is not a public school in any city of the United 
States which has so large a plot of ground as it should 
have. Poverty in land varies from a small strip around 
the building to not so much as a square inch outside the 
site actually occupied. Even in building a prison many 
cities are more mindful of the health and comfort of the 
future inmates, and provide more air space and sun space, 
than for the schools. Each pupil should have, on the play- 
ground, at least five times as much room as he has floor 
space in the school building, and although this is over 
twice as much as is suggested by some authorities it is 
little enough. In any case, the grounds should be large 
enough to prevent the nearest buildings from interfering 
with the supply of light in the class rooms. In every city 
the school authorities should have power to condemn real 
estate for school purposes ; it is no less important, surely, 
that the community should have right of eminent domain 
in the grave matter of school sites than in the case of 
streets or railways. 

Roark's Econ. — 6 



82 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

Ornamentation of Grounds. — In ornamenting city 
school grounds a compromise must be made between the 
need of free play and need of aesthetic environment. 
Such a compromise may be effected by grouping trees 
and shrubbery, leaving open areas for play. Oppor- 
tunity for spontaneous exercise is more important than 
ornamentation, but still no school yard need be wholly 
barren of grass and trees. 

The Building. — City school buildings are now planned 
from within out ; the needs of the school are provided 
for, and the exterior architecture is made to fit these. 
Not so long ago it was the other way. The needs that 
are vital to the school and that the architect must ade- 
quately provide for are few, but imperative. What- 
ever the building lacks it must not lack these : spacious 
rooms and corridors, with ample facilities for both nat- 
ural and artificial lighting, a sufficient number of wide 
exits to empty the house safely and quickly, adequate 
heating and ventilating apparatus, an assembly hall, suf- 
ficient toilet accommodations, and an " emergency room." 
Other features are more or less needful, but these are in- 
dispensable to true economy. 

No building should be erected to house more than 
twelve hundred pupils, because more than that number 
can not be economically provided for under one roof 
either in supervision and teaching care, or in material 
comfort and safety. Neither should any building have 
more than two stories above the ground level, for reasons 
of safety and comfort. 

Corridors and Exits. — Hallways should be at least 
fifteen feet wide, and they had better be twenty ; the doors 
leading into them from the several rooms should swing 
outward and toward the nearest stairway. There must 



THE CITY SCHOOL 83 

be ill the corridors no obstruction of any sort ; the way 
to the exits must be clear. The files of pupils, passing 
in and out, should not have to make a sharp turn to get 
into or away from a stairway. The stairways should be 
guarded by very strong and high balustrades, and should 
have two hand rails on each side, one lower than the 
other, so that pupils of different sizes may have the help 
and protection aft"orded by a good handhold. The doors 
at the exits must open ontzcard ; this is, in some states, 
required by law. 

Heating and Ventilating. — There are several good 
systems for heating and ventilating city school buildings. 
The details must be committed to the care of an expert 
architect, who should be held to the absolute requirement 
to supply warm, clam air to the whole building in such 
quantities as to ensure a complete change about every five 
or six minutes. 

Cloak Closets. — The cloak closets should meet the re- 
quirements of accessibility, cleanliness, and dryness. 
They must be so arranged that wraps, umbrellas, and 
overshoes will dry quickly and without giving off damp- 
ness or odor into the air of the hallways or rooms. These 
details, also, can be provided for only by the expert school 
architect. 

The Assembly Hall. — Every school building should 
have a w-ell-lighted, comfortably chaired assembly hall, 
with seating capacity somewhat greater than the enroll- 
ment of pupils. The value of such a hall is now recog- 
nized by all practical principals, and by most school 
boards. It is a prime factor in the successful correlation 
of school and community and is indispensable to the best 
work within the school itself. 

Communicating Rooms. — It will often be convenient 



84 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

and a means of saving time, if two or more rooms are so 
built that they can be thrown into one. There are many 
exercises in which a hundred or more pupils of the same 
grade can take part together, although for regular class 
work they should be divided into two or more groups in 
separate rooms. 

Toilet Rooms. — Provision must be made not merely 
for water closets but for toilet rooms, with mirrors, lava- 
tories, and a good supply of soap and towels. 

In an increasing number of cities facilities for bathing 
are being put into school buildings, and if these are used 
under proper regulations the results are excellent. 

The conditions that are imperatively requisite in the 
toilet rooms are (i) abundance of light, (2) privacy, 
(3) cleanliness, (4) automatic flushing, (5) perfect san- 
itary plumbing, including separate ventilation through 
high stacks. 

Library. — There is great need in each school building 
of a room specially fitted up for use as a library and 
reading room. No matter how small the collection of 
books may be they should be carefully indexed by sub- 
jects, on the card plan, and pupils should be trained both 
in ready use of the card index and in the handling of the 
books as tools to work with. 

The " Emergency Room." — There should be on each 
floor of the school building a room equipped with a 
lounge or cot, an easy chair or two, and simple medicines 
and other provisions for help in cases of sudden illness 
or accidents of any sort. Such a room would add great- 
ly to the comfort and safety of the weak and suffering 
among the pupils, and to the peace of mind of principal 
and teachers. 

The foregoing discussion of the building has pur- 



THli CITY SCHOOL 85 

posely been made brief, because tbe public niind is to-day 
so awakened upon the subject that school boards are held 
closely to their duty in the erection of buildings. In every 
case, when the erection of a new building is about to be 
undertaken, the school board should consult with the sup- 
erintendent and principals, and their suggestions upon the 
practical working needs of the school should be carefully 
embodied in the architect's plans. It only remains to add 
that architectural harmony and proper decoration within 
and without are so important as almost to be classed as 
essentials.^ 

An architecture of simple dignity and beauty, hallways 
and rooms decorated with copies of classic statuary and 
of the world's best pictures, have an educative influence 
all the more powerful because their effect is largely sub- 
conscious. 

Drinking Facilities. — Decency and health require that 
each pupil shall have his own drinking cup, and that 
water should be taken from the bucket or jar through 
a faucet, not by dipping the drinking cups in. 
(b) Furniture and Apparatus 

The furniture of a city school need not be different in 
any respect, upon pedagogical grounds, from that of the 
rural school. There is the same need in the one school 
as in the other for the single, adjustable desk and seat, 
for the same sort of blackboards, for bookcases and 
tables, and means of water supply.^ 

' " School Sanitation and Decoration," p. 94 et seq.; " Recent School 
Architecture," issued by Supt. Public Inst., Albany, New York; " Decorating 
School Rooms," Report of Nat. Commissioner of Education, '95—6, 2: 1363; 
Twenty-second Report of State Supt. of Ills., p. CXVII; " Sanitary Condi- 
tions for School Houses," Circ. No. 173, Bureau of Education, Wash- 
ington. 

^Shaw's "School Hygiene," p. 116; Kotelmann's "School Hygiene" 
(Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.); Educational Review, 18: 9; Report of Nat. 
Commissioner of Ed., '98—9, i: 611. 



86 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

The apparatus needed by the city school differs from 
that required in the country school of similar grade only 
in the nature-study work. In the city, facilities are 
needed in the way of museums and window gardens that 
in the country are unnecessary because of the abundance 
of nature-study material all about the rural school. 

Of course, when abundant apparatus can be afforded, 
better teaching can be done (by no means necessarily 
imll be done) with it than without it. But it is well to 
remember that if the pupil is too richly supplied with 
apparatus he is apt to grow into the conviction that good 
work can not be done without it, whereas, often, the best 
work is done in a laboratory whose equipment is less 
than good, but is well supplemented by the ingenuity and 
contrivance of the student. 

It is so common now to find even in buildings not 
otherwise fully equipped, such conveniences as automatic 
program regulators, and telephone connections between 
the office and the several rooms that it is not needful to 
enter here into any detail with regard to these things. 
They are not absolutely necessary and are not without 
objections, but are very helpful in directing the routine 
of work. 

B. Organization and Administration. 

(a) Beginning the Session 

A Preliminary Meeting. — The principal should meet 

his teachers, all of them together, a few days before the 

opening of the school. The objects of this meeting are 

( 1 ) to give directions regarding the coming work ; and 

(2) to inspire each teacher afresh with zeal to be and to 
do for the sake of the children. The teachers must be 
brought to feel that the work which they are about to 



THE CITY SCHOOL 87 

resume is full of privilege and joy; that whatever of 
vigor and mental riches and spiritual uplift they have ac- 
quired during the past year and the closing vacation is 
capital that owes large dividends to the pupils. 

The First Day of School. — Each teacher should have 
a clear and detailed plan of the first day's work in mind 
before entering her room. This plan must provide for 
the following essentials : The sincere welcoming of each 
pupil, the recognition of each one's individuality ; a 
friendly, general chat about the way the summer was 
spent ; clear and explicit information and directions as to 
the books and other supplies to be newly purchased ; a 
brief, crisp review of some fundamentals in last year's 
work ; and, lastly, the assigning of some lessons to be 
recited the next day. Each pupil should go away with 
the feeling, at the close of the first day, that it is better 
to be in school than out, and that he and the teacher are 
going to be good friends. 

The teacher can not be too careful and explicit in di- 
recting the pupils regarding the new books and sup- 
plies needed. A safe plan is to give to each a printed list 
with the things required plainly marked. 

The crust of forgetfulness that has formed over much 
of what was learned last year should be broken by a 
brief, judicious review of the salient points in the sub- 
ject-matter covered by last year's work. Such a review, 
informal and sympathetic, is admirably adapted to show 
the pupil his needs and to swing the mind into the path 
of study again. It will, too, reveal much to the teacher. 

The custom which has so long prevailed, of beginning 
real work only in the second week, is to be unqualifiedly 
condemned. The pupils have, at the opening of school 
the enthusiasm born of change from the summer's idle- 



88 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

ness (or of the interests kindled by the vacation schools) 
and this enthusiasm must be yoked to active work imme- 
diately. No precious days or hours should be lost in 
getting ready to begin. 

(b) Conducting the School 

Any school must, in order to do good work, be more 
than a mere aggregation of unit pupils or unit groups ; 
it must be a Hying organism, its parts cooperating for a 
common purpose, the whole pervaded and animated by 
the same spirit. Such conditions it is the function of the 
principal to bring about. His business is to create the 
distinctive atmosphere of the school, to have a clear and 
definite educational policy and to bring each teacher into 
a sympathetic and appreciative understanding of it. He 
must arouse within each the spirit of cooperation and 
mutual helpfulness, and a profound sense of responsibil- 
ity, without which nothing permanent can be done. 

The Principal's Equipment. — The principal must 
know his building from basement to roof ; his visits of 
inspection must be frequent and effective. He must 
know his teachers, their personal and professional worth. 
He must know at sight and, if possible, by name every 
pupil in his school, and ought to be somewhat acquainted 
with their home environment and their capacity and in- 
clination or disinclination for work. He must know the 
system of which his school is a part. These things he 
must knozv almost automatically, as the immediate tools 
of his work ; the more he can have besides of knowledge 
and culture the better principal will he be. 

The principal comes into professional contact with his 
teachers in two ways, through teachers' meetings and by 
inspecting class work. 



THE CITY SCHOOL 89 

Teachers' Meetings. — A principal should meet all his 
teachers together not oftener than once a month, and the 
time should fall just after the principals' meeting-, so that 
whatever of inspiration and enthuiasm marked that 
meeting may he carried at once with freshness and zest 
into the conference of teachers in the individual school. 

Objects. — Teachers' meetings should be held mainly 
to get the helping touch of professional comradeship. To 
secure it there must be some basis of serious work. This 
basis will necessarily be determined by local and immedi- 
ate needs. There is fine suggestiveness in the following 
sentences from the letter of a practical principal : 
" There is a great and constantly growing mass of in- 
teresting and profitable material with which teachers are 
not acquainted. There is a knowledge of the purposes 
and functions of school life of which they have a very 
dim conception ; there are theories and methods of pres- 
entation which they neither understand nor appreciate. 
There is a vivifying life principle about school work 
which is the soul of the school, which is entirely absent 
from many rooms. I have found it helpful to present 
any exercise which would tend to raise the standard of 
our teachers in any of these directions. The principal's 
best work is, I believe, that which inspires his teachers 
to become students, for a teacher student is usually an 
excellent student teacher. Such work is needed as will 
kindle and keep alive a fine professional spirit. The 
great danger is that teachers will become self-satisfied, 
drop into a routine way of doing things, and cease to 
make professional progress. High and constantly ad- 
vancing ideals must be held before them. There must 
be a constant inquiry into the philosophy and success of 
methods used." 



90 



ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 



Although the work of any meeting may be quite varied, 
the whole series of meetings must carry through the year 
some central core of reading, thought, and investigation. 
To plan such work wisely is one of the most important 
duties of a principal. 

The Principal's Inspection. — The results of a visit of 
inspection should be (i) increased confidence of the 
teacher in the principal as a gentleman and as a super- 
visor, (2) quickened willingness of the pupils and teacher 
to work harder, (3) the noting by the principal of points 
in the teacher's work, for commendation or criticism. 

The principal should have no cut-and-dried formula 
of inspection. One time he may simply sit quietly for a 
while, and withdraw, after a pleasant word of greeting 
to teacher and pupils ; another time he may make a short, 
cheery talk to the pupils ; and at another he may " take 
the room " and teach through one or two periods. Upon 
this last point it may be further said that the principal 
should teach in the presence of the teacher both to give 
her a good example and to disarm her criticism that he 
" is always ready to tell how, but avoids shozving how." 
But such teaching should never be done with the air of 
depreciating the teacher's work ; rather should it be done 
as if it were a privilege and a pleasure the principal had 
asked to be permitted to enjoy. Under no circumstances 
should a teacher be criticised in the presence of the 
pupils, either openly or by implication. 

Teachers' Visitings. — A plan well approved by prin- 
cipals who have tried it, is to have a teacher whose work 
is weak at some point visit the class room of another 
teacher especially skillful in that particular. Alore can 
be gained, often, from such a visit than from much talk- 
ing and directing by the principal. 



THE CITY SCHOOL 9 1 

The Principal in the Office. — A principal need spend 
only a comparatively small part of his working day in his 
office ; and when there he should be much more than a 
mere clerk and talmlator of statistics. 

His office hours, which nuist be fixed and closely ob- 
served, should be known to the patrons of his school. 
Any parent, teacher, or pupil who has a legitimate cause 
for seeing the principal should be given a cordial and 
careful hearing during office hours. 

The Principal as Teacher. — The principal should ex- 
ercise other functions than those of a clerk, an inspector, 
or an executive. Just as the teacher of chemistry has his 
own laboratory where he keeps himself in fresh and close 
contact with the problems of his science, so the school 
principal should have his own laboratory of pedagogy in 
which to test for himself such theories of teaching as 
seem to him deserving of a trial. He should teach at 
least one class regularly. This class need not be from 
the higher grades necessarily. Many a primary teacher 
would be saved the worry of trying some method wholly 
condemned by her experience, if the principal would only 
try it himself before forcing it into the primary rooms. 
No good reason can be assigned why a principal should 
not teach a class each term. 

Opening Exercises. — Everything suggested for the 
rural school, regarding opening exercises,^ is even more 
strongly to be urged in the case of the city school. If 
there is an auditorium in the building large enough to 
seat all the pupils — and there ought to be — the whole 
school should be assembled at least twice weekly for gen- 
eral exercises at the beginning of the school day. All 
but the two or three lowest grades could, with profit, 

1 See pp. 49-51. 



g2 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

come together daily. The programs for these exercises 
should be of the same general character as those sug- 
gested for the rural schools, but may be as much richer 
as the city is richer than the country in art, music, li- 
braries, and forensic talent. The fact is being pressed 
upon the educational consciousness of the country to- 
day, very earnestly, that the child should get many things 
in school, other than the facts of the text-books. The 
general morning exercises are coming more and more to 
be recognized and used as a means of culture and char- 
acter building. 

In case there is no assembly room, each teacher can 
have suitable opening exercises for her own grade. 

Half-day Sessions. — The trend of city school manage- 
ment is to-day strongly in the direction of having, for 
the lower grades at least, only half-day sessions. In 
some places no grade has more than a half-day session. 
Where it has been tried the plan has, almost without ex- 
ception, approved itself to pupils, parents, and school 
authorities. If two sessions are held daily all or a large 
part of one of them should be devoted to study. It is 
as much the business of the teacher to teach a pupil hoiu 
to study as to test the results of his effort. If two ses- 
sions are held, whether on the old plan or according to 
the suggestion just made, there should be no home study 
required of any grade below the sixth or seventh ; but 
all pupils should be encouraged to practice music or 
drawing, or to read, at home, in lieu of regular lesson 
work. 

" School Fatigue." ^ — In arranging a daily program 

1 Consult Kraepelin's " Zur Ueberburdungsfrage " Psycholog. Rev. 6: 
204, 573; Pop. Sci. Mo. 55: 511; Report of Nat. Commissioner of Ed., 
'95-6, 2: 1175; Krohn's "Minor Mental Abnormalities in Children"; Re- 
port of Nat. Commissioner of Ed., '98—9, i: 471. 



THE CITY SCHOOL 



93 



for a city school the factor of " school fatigue," so called, 
must be takeu more into consideration than in the rural 
school. In discussing- this it is necessary, at the be- 
ginning", to discriminate between " weariness " and 
'' fatigue." 

Weariness and Fatigue Discriminated. — One writer 
says " weariness is a tiuctuating personal attitude which 
is scarcely susceptible of record in any form." In other 
and somewhat simpler words, weariness is due to lack of 
interest in study or to a positive dislike for it. Arouse 
interest and weariness vanishes. Monotony, lack of in- 
terest and enthusiasm on the part of the teacher, too dif- 
ficult or too easy tasks, lack of evident usefulness in the 
subject studied, are the most common and constant causes 
of weariness, and sometimes produce a veritable mental 
nausea in the pupil. Right teaching is the only remedy. 

Fatigue has been defined as " a reduction in the total 
effective force of the individual, which can be . . . 
measured." Weariness, then, is psychological, while 
fatigue is physio-psychic and pathological. Tests have 
shown that a pupil may be wearied but not fatigued, and, 
on the other hand, may be seriously fatigued even when 
there is still zest for work. Some results of investiga- 
tions in this subject have been taken to indicate that the 
specific fatigue poison acts upon the nerve centers so as 
to inhibit their tendency to conserve energy, after a cer- 
tain degree of expenditure has been reached, and thus, 
so to say, the brakes are taken off and work can be done 
with even greater facility, and more disastrous conse- 
quences, than usual. There is so little practical agree- 
ment among those who have written most upon the sub- 
ject of fatigue that teachers may well hesitate to accept 
any conclusion as definite. Certain it is that the method 



94 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

of detecting fatigue which is so strongly indorsed by some 
German investigators ^ in this field is impracticable of 
daily use even in the hands of an expert ; and the method 
has, moreover, been seriously discredited by experiment- 
ers in this country. 

Applications to the Daily Program. — There is, how- 
ever, a more or less well marked daily rhythm of capac- 
ity, or at least of effort, in pupils through the school day. 
Such results of the study of fatigue as are now applicable 
to the arrangement of a daily program can be briefly 
stated : ( i ) The recitation periods should not be too 
long, six to eight minutes in the lowest grade, and run- 
ning up to thirty or forty minutes in the eighth grade ; 

(2) there should be frequent rest periods, enlivened 
by the singing of easy and favorite songs, or simple 
calisthenics, or the reading of a short story by the teacher ; 

(3) the more difficult studies (the " thought subjects ") 
should be placed in the morning before the first general 
recess, and between noon and the afternoon recess. The 
" culture studies " should occur during the last forenoon 
and last afternoon sessions, if the whole day is used. 
One of the most important facts revealed by the inves- 
tigations upon fatigue is that, rather contrary to the 
popular idea, set gymnastics produce or intensify fatigue 
instead of relieving it. Light, spontaneous play is help- 
ful. 

Fatigue Rarely Due to Study. — There is a growing 
conviction, however, that at least below the high school 
there is little genuine pathological fatigue which can be 
justly attributed to overstudy. Most observant teachers 
in the United States are doubtless ready to say that few, 

^ Griesbach's " Aesthesiometric method"; Archiv fiir Hygiene, Vol. 24, 
p. 124; See Psychological Review, Vol. 6, pp. 573, 599. 



THE CITY SCHOOL 95 

if an}-, healthy pupils are injured or seriously affected 
even temporarily by hard study, if it is done under com- 
fortable and hygienic physical conditions and under the 
spur of interest. Many causes of fatigue lie outside the 
school ; there are dancing lessons, parties, socials, recep- 
tions, musicales, and, in the case of not a few pupils, 
exhausting physical labor or poor food. Many of the 
results too readily attributed to overwork in school, by 
numerous critics, can be traced directly to these or other 
extraneous causes. Causes of fatigue may be inherent in 
the physique of the child, also. Eye or ear may be de- 
fective, and the strain from such defect is severe and 
fatiguing. The teacher should be sympathetically watch- 
ful for cases of this kind, and should give the suft'erers 
all the advantage of position in the room. In many 
cities medical officers regularly inspect pupils for the 
purpose of detecting, and prescribing for, defects of the 
sensorium. 

Again, the personality and manner of the teacher and 
his methods of teaching are far more direct and fre- 
quent causes of fatigue, as well as of weariness, than is 
hard study. 

Teachers and pupils can not be reminded too often 
that hard study under favorable conditions is healthful, 
not harmfully fatiguing; it is almost never the work that 
is hurtful, but only its method and conditions. 

Fatigue through Misapplied Effort. — Pupils often 
induce fatigue by wasting nervous energy through need- 
less muscular contractions while at work. Such pupils 
write or draw or do other work " all over," so to speak, 
bringing into activity many other muscles than those re- 
quired to do the particular thing in hand. A good illus- 
tration may be seen in a young child just learning to use 



96 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

scissors ; it will soon stop cutting, with a fatigued sigh, 
and will even lie down to rest. 

In connection with this subject also are to be remem- 
bered the dangers of much of the careful muscular ad- 
justment required by kindergarten exercises. Until the 
child is old enough properly to coordinate its mus- 
cular activities, any attempt at work requiring close ad- 
justment must result in an overflow of nervous energy 
into muscles not needed, and marked fatigue is the al- 
most immediate result/ 

If school authorities will see that at school pupils shall 
have comfortable seats, good light, properly heated and 
ventilated rooms in which to work, and, above all, teach- 
ers over them who can arouse genuine interest and love 
of doing; and if, on the other hand, parents will see that 
at home the children eat proper food, sleep plentifully, 
and avoid all dissipations, then but little complaint will 
be heard about fatigue.- 

School Government. — The control of a city school, 
just as that of any other, is a matter of arousing the in- 
terest of the pupils in legitimate activities. When the 
interest of the pupil is secured all is secured. 

With regard to the maintenance of good order in a 
city school nothing further need be said than was said in 
the discussion of the country school, except upon two 

* See the article by Burke, " From Fundamental to Accessory in the 
Development of the Nervous System and of Movements," in the Pedagogical 
Seminary, Vol. 6, p. 25. 

* See for exhaustive discussions of fatigue the following: Bulletin No. 
36, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Report of the National Com- 
missioner of Education, '94-s, i: 449; Report of National Educational As- 
sociation, '98, 550; Growth of the Brain, Donaldson (Scribners, N. Y.); 
Psychological Review, 7: 466, 547; Educational Review, 15: 246; "La Fa- 
tigue intellectuelle," Binet and Henri; "The Study of Children," Warner 
(MacMillan Co.); Matter of interest will also be found in " School Deport- 
ment and the Weather," Educational Review, 19: 160; and in Psychological 
Review Monograph No. 10. 



THE CUV SCHOOL 97 

points, the relative authority and duty of principal and 
teachers, and the plan known as " pupil self-government." 

Each teacher should he responsihle for the order in her 
own. room, and should never call in the principal to re- 
inforce her, or send a pupil to the office for correction, 
unless the emergency is extreme. The teacher, knowing 
the facts at first hand, is hetter able to do justice, and 
keeping the matter in her own hands strengthens her 
authority ; to call for aid is a sign of weakness. 

Pupil Self-government. — Since 1896 a plan has been 
tried in several cities of this country wdiich, according 
to the claims of its advocates, relieves principals and 
teachers of a large share of the burden of school 
government by transferring it to the shoulders of the 
pupils themselves.^ Briefly, the plan consists in organiz- 
ing the school (at least the upper grades) into a com- 
munity with its own legislative body and officers, that 
frame and execute laws compelling the good behavior 
of the pupils. It is easy to see that when the plan is 
successful the results must be excellent. It is a thorough, 
real, and practical training in the responsibilities and 
privileges of citizenship, and just such training it has 
long been considered the special duty of the public school 
to give. Such a plan, successfully carried out, is more 
than merely an aid to the good government of the school ; 
it is also a laboratory nicthod of teaching civics. At 
least one similar, and successful, experiment in giving 
boys and girls practical training in citizenship has been 
made outside the schools,^ and from the records of this 

1 See School and Home Education, Vol. 18, pp. 238, 309; Review of Re- 
views, Vol. 20, p. 673. 

^ See Accounts of the George Junior Republic, at Freeville, N. Y., in 
Review of Reviews, Vol. 13, p. 572; McClure's Magazine, Vol. 9, p. 735; 
^^"orld's Work, Vol. 2, p. 1296. 

Roark's Ecox. — 7 



98 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

experiment much can be gained that will be helpful to 
all teachers who strive to prepare their pupils for living 
in a self-governing American community. 

(c) Closing the School 

The individual city school should have its closing ex- 
ercises after much the same plan as those of the rural 
school. There should be no " letting down " during the 
last few weeks, no hasty reviewing for a final examina- 
tion to determine promotions, but a steady, happy hold- 
ing to the work with increasing power and constancy, 
and a series of public exercises (including an exposition) 
on the last day, which shall leave in each pupil a feeling 
of regret that school is over. During the last week of 
the session, as during the first, each teacher should show 
by daily work and example that it is good to be a student, 
that there is no pleasure so great as that which comes 
from righteous activity. 

(3) THE COLLEGE ^ 

The discussion of the distinctive function of the col- 
lege, the curriculum, the shortening of the course, elec- 
tives, and such matters, will be undertaken later, and only 
some suggestions upon the material and admmistrative 
side of college management will be offered here. 

A. Buildings and Equipment 

All suggestions made with regard to the structure of 
city school buildings, and their equipment and ornamen- 
tation, apply also to the housings of a college. If there 
be money enough each department of college work may 
have its own building, and there should, of course, be 

* Consult Thwing's " College Administration," Century Co. 



THE COLLEGE 99 

architectural plan and symmetry in each building and all 
the structures should be grouped upon the grounds with 
regard to the best aesthetic effect. Beauty of material 
environment is a factor in character making which the 
college can not afford to be indifferent about and it must 
call in the expert architect and the artistic landscape 
gardener. 

Assembly Halls. — If the expense can be aft'orded, a 
college should have both a chapel for the daily meetings 
of the students and faculty in religious and other exer- 
cises, and an auditorium for the seating of at least twice 
as many as the chapel is designed to accommodate. The 
larger hall would be used on all occasions, and they 
should not be few, when exercises were held which the 
general public would attend. The assembly hall should 
be fully equipped for illustrated lectures, and should have 
a good stage and some stock scenery. A good musical 
instrument, piano or pipe organ, is an indispensable part 
of the furnishing of chapel and auditorium. 

Cottages vs. Dormitories. — Unless the college is sit- 
uated in a small town where the community is in full 
sympathy with the institution, it will usually have to 
offer sufficient lodging and boarding facilities to accom- 
modate the majority of its students. In such a case, the 
cottage system is preferable, on the whole, to dormitories, 
and the cost of cottages is not much more than that of 
properly constructed dormitories. 

If dormitories are built they should have sound-proof 
floors and walls, and should be fitted with the most 
hygienic heating and ventilating apparatus, and the 
plumbing of bath rooms and closets should be above sus- 
picion. Although such suggestions are most matter-of- 
course, yet they are seldom acted upon except by the 

LotC. 



100 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

older and wealthier colleges ; but whatever the college 
offers — whether much or little — should be the best, 
the safest, and the most economical of student health and 
energy. 

B. Organization of the Session 

A Basic Unity in all Educational Practice. — There 
is need of insistent reiteration of the fact that through- 
out the methodology of education there is a basic unity 
from the primary school to the highest university. 
However various and even diverse may be the modes of 
applying fundamental principles, the principles themselves 
remain the same ; otherwise no science or philosophy of 
education would be possible. 

College interior administration rests upon the same 
principles as the interior administration of the lower 
schools. There is no counsel good for the teacher of 
the one room country school that is not equally good for 
the college professor or college president, differences 
being observed in degree but not in kind. The error 
of not fully recognizing this truth is one of the gravest 
to be noted in current educational theory and practice. 
College men have too long supposed that the recommen- 
dations of the educationists are only for the teachers of 
primary schools. No one thing is more needed by col- 
leges to-day than that their professors should make care- 
ful, honest, sympathetic study of the science and phi- 
losophy of education as a profession. 

Work Should Begin at Once. — The chief concern of 
college authorities, at the opening of the annual session, 
should be to get all students, and especially those entering 
for the first time, quickly and happily at work. The 
waste of time and energy that still characterizes the open- 
ing days of the session in many colleges is lamentable, 



THE COLLEGE loi 

to use no stronger term. Almost without exception 
every student brings ambition, enthusiasm, and purpose, 
to the opening of the college year, and to permit these 
motives to be dissipated through lack of definite work- 
to do, while days are consumed in ineffective efforts to 
finish, entrance examinations and get classes together, is 
nothing less than criminal. Within three days at the ut- 
most every class should be organized and each student 
should have his full quota of work assigned him. In 
this way best can the idly inclined, the homesick, and the 
easily discouraged be put in the safe road, and the alert 
and industrious kept from a chafing dissatisfaction. 
There is no better tonic and prophylactic than earnest, 
happy work. 

Business System Necessary. — To the prompt and 
effective organization of college work business method 
and system are as necessary as to the successful organi- 
zation of a commercial enterprise. Everything, from 
the president's office to the janitor's room, should bear 
the stamp of business precision and efficiency. The 
clerical staff should be large enough and skilled enough 
to prevent any delay in registering names, receipting for 
fees, assignment of lodging, and directing the movements 
of incoming students. 

C. The Maintenance of Good Order 
" Town and Gown." — A tradition from which many 
colleges still suffer, but from which they seem to make 
little eft"ort to free themselves, is that college students 
constitute a class to whom the laws governing other citi- 
zens are not expected to apply. The sooner students are 
made to understand clearly that they may expect no 
privileges or immunities that are not granted to all citi- 
zens, whether in college or out of it, the sooner will the 



102 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

number of student escapades and pranks show a marked 
decrease. The faculty and the civic authorities should 
cooperate in securing the proper legal punishment of 
students who transgress law, whether they do so in town 
or on the college grounds. A young man does not, by 
matriculating in a college, escape from any of the obli- 
gations of citizenship ; rather does he by that act of de- 
voting himself to the intellectual life also commit him- 
self to the finer civic life. The level of good citizenship 
ought to be higher in the college than outside. A strong 
university president well defined the attitude the college 
authorities should hold toward the students in this matter 
when he wrote, " I would have pleasure in all amuse- 
ments or frolics w^hich do not outrage decency, endanger 
persons, injure property, or interfere with the orderly 
progress of affairs. When one transcends these bounds 
he should be punished, and no more useful lesson can be 
taught to students than that they stand upon no different 
footing from all other people in this regard." 

Need of Right Interests. — With college students pre- 
cisely as with pupils in the elementary school, the main- 
tenance of good order depends upon the awakening and 
directing of right interests. The average student, if kept 
occupied with interesting work and left free from un- 
necessary and irritating requirements, will give the col- 
lege authorities little or no trouble. 

Teaching Power the Greatest Factor. — The teaching 
pozver of the men and women who make up the college 
faculty is one of the first and greatest in the list of in- 
fluences that make for good in the life of the student. 
The conviction that knotvlcdge of a subject by no means 
necessarily fits its possessor to teach that subject inspir- 
ingly is gradually forcing a way into the conservatism 



THE COLLEGE 103 

of colleges, long the strongest strongholds of opposition 
to the idea that teaching is a skilled profession. The man 
who cares more for his subject, for his own growth of 
knowledge and skill in it, than for making it a means of 
growth to his pupils may be an expert physicist, or 
Hellenist, or engineer, but he assuredly is not a good 
teacher.^ 

Mere Knowledge not Sufficient. — Tlie college profes- 
sor must know his subject, it goes without saying, but 
added thereto, before he can teach, he must know also 
the disciplinary and cultural value of that subject, and 
must be filled with a consuming zeal to use it to the ut- 
most in the development of his pupils. The chief func- 
tion of the teacher is to inspire, and to this end he must 
use knowledge as a means only. 

WHien all who meet young men and women in the col- 
lege class room take this attitude toward the work to be 
done there, and bring to their teaching not only sound 
and exact knowledge but also a broad culture, and a rich 
and sympathetic personality, then the relation of profes- 
sor and student will cease to be that of taskmaster and 
fag, and college government will become self-govern- 
ment. 

A large majority of those who enter college enter with 
the determination to behave well and to study, and if put 
actively to work at once and held to it by the magnetism 
of good teaching, will have neither time nor temptation 
to abandon this first intention. Even the rawest fresh- 
man, while he can in no fashion define good teaching, 
knows it and responds to it when he receives it. It is a 
pitiful thing to have the enthusiasm of a student killed by 
poor teaching. 

* Educational Review, 9: 10, 



I04 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

The "Personal Touch" in College Government 
Individual Personal Work of the Teachers- — The 
strongest influence for good that can come into the hfe 
of the young man or woman at college is the personality 
of the teacher. If any professor comes to feel that he 
need have no personal interest in his students outside 
the class room, and none there beyond the lesson work, 
he thereby loses fitness to be a professor. Each man 
and woman in the teaching body of a college must feel a 
close personal interest in both the intramural and ex- 
tramural welfare of every student in the institution. 

The personal value of the professor, his sympathetic 
interest in his pupils not merely as learners but as men 
and women, must make itself felt as a living presence in 
the class room, in one or more of the organizations of the 
college, and in his own home, to enter which for help 
and counsel, his students should feel always welcome. 
The professor who has at heart the character growth 
of a student, rather than his daily capacity to receive a 
few facts, will miss no opportunity for kindly watchful- 
ness, or helpful sympathy, or directing word. The 
formulae of mathematics, the symbols of chemistry, 
and the notation of logic may be, most likely will be, for- 
gotten, but the way in which the teacher presents them, 
the transfusion of his personality through them into the 
mind and heart of the pupil, these are the things that 
abide, along with the memory of the kind word, the 
thoughtful act, the example of dignity and manliness. 

Whether in all cases it is well to set apart certain mem- 
bers of the Faculty as " advisers " or counselors, as is 
done at some universities, is open to question. It does not 
seem wise to commit to a few men's doing what is equally 
the business of all. 



THE COLLEGE 105 

The Reception of New Students, — As teaching power 
and personaUty stand first in point of importance among 
the factors that make for good order in the college, so 
the welcome which the college gives to the entering 
student stands first in time. 

From the moment the student, fresh from home, steps 
ofif the train to find new duties among strangers, he 
should he made to feel that the college is for him, to do 
him service, to recognize his manhood, and to socialize 
his energies. To no student must the college come to 
stand as an impersonal and indifferent corporation. 

No Published Rules. — Precisely the same reasons 
given on an earlier page against announcing a set of rules 
or regulations in the elementary school hold against doing 
so in a college. Everybody competent to enter college 
at all knows how to behave well and should be credited 
with the purpose to do so. Surely a college student has 
the same right as a prisoner at the bar, to be considered 
innocent until found guilty ; but to receive almost at the 
very moment of his entrance a printed set of iron-clad 
rules to which he is required to promise adherence is to 
receive a gratuitous hint that his motives are subject to 
suspicion at the outset. 

President Draper states the case clearly and correctly 
when he writes : " I would permit the largest freedom 
of individual action, on the assumption that it will be in 
legitimate bounds." When the responsibility for good 
behavior is thrown upon the student he is more apt to 
conduct himself properly than if he feels that he can 
take advantage of the tradition that it is always fair, if 
not commendable, to circumvent the regulations and out- 
wit those whose business it is to enforce them. If the 
incoming student is met with a genuine cordialitv, an 



lo6 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

honest and candid welcome, and a tacit assumption that 
he is a gentleman and will so comport himself the odds 
are strongly against his ever making much trouble for 
the college. 

The Social Life of the College. — The most thought- 
ful consideration should be given by the college authori- 
ties from trustees to the humblest tutor, to the social life 
of the students, and as thorough and adequate provision 
should be made for it as for the teaching of biology or 
of mathematics. The social impulses are inherent and 
strong, and if right direction be given to them and proper 
opportunities be afforded for their wholesome outworking 
they can be made most helpful factors in the maintenance 
of order. In the first place, if the college is coeduca- 
tional, the young men and young women should be per- 
mitted to meet upon the same footing and in the same 
way that young men and young women who have had 
a sane and simple bringing up meet anywhere. There 
is no stronger influence for good order than that grow- 
ing out of the healthy intellectual comradeship of the 
two sexes meeting unaffectedly in the regular exercises 
of the college. Such mingling, under the stimulus of 
the sort of teaching which puts emphasis upon intellectual 
achievement, is sure to clear the young mind of mere sen- 
timentality, and establish in each sex a sound respect for 
the other, a respect leading inevitably to an increase of 
self-respect and consequent correct behavior. 

Social Gatherings. — There should be many gatherings 
during the session in a well-governed college in which 
students and faculty should meet in a purely social way. 

These meetings, to be most fruitful of mutual helpful- 
ness, should not always be in the form of set, quasi- 
official receptions. Such receptions are useful, but do 



THE COLLEGE I07 

not have the personal quahty that marks the hospitality 
extended to fewer pupils at a time by president and pro- 
fessors in their own homes. It is the personal touch that 
counts in any psychic constructive work, and, besides, the 
students have a fundamental right to the training and 
culture which only the best social environment can give. 

Student Organizations 

Clubs. — The social impulses of the student body may 
work out healthily and good order be promoted through 
various well-organized clubs. A few of these clubs may 
be purely social, as college fraternities are when at their 
best, but it is better if they are, for the most part, used 
as a means of intellectual self-culture. The college should 
give every encouragement to the organization and growth 
of the '* Chemical Club," or the " Classical Club/' or the 
" Good English Club." Such clubs bring together stu- 
dents having important interests in common, intensify 
these interests, and emphasize and make popular the cul- 
ture side of study. In many instances if members of the 
faculty are present the club meetings will be of the nature 
of a seminar. 

Religious Associations. — The religious growth which 
is so essential to a proper symmetry of character is as 
much the concern of the college as the physical or intel- 
lectual. Almost all the non-state institutions of collegiate 
rank in this country were organized with the purpose 
of making this fact prominent in their work. Although 
the state colleges and universities of later growth usually 
refrain from giving prominence to the religious influence, 
as distinct from moral, from fear of offending sectarians, 
yet the necessity of providing for the religious needs of 
the student is coming to be generally recognized. In the 
last dozen years various organizations have made them- 



lo8 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

selves felt upon the lives and characters of the students 
in a most helpful way. The Young Men's Christian 
Association, and that of the young women, the Young 
Women's Christian Temperance Union, and its men's 
auxiliary, have proved most beneficial in every institution 
where the authorities have given them encouragement and 
room to grow. 

In some colleges and universities, even those of non- 
sectarian founding, a noon-day or vesper prayer meeting, 
voluntarily organized and kept up by the students, is a 
constant source of help and growth. 

All such associations should have the heartiest recogni- 
tion and encouragement from college authorities and 
parents ; but their organizing and directing force should 
come spontaneously from the student body. 

The social and ethical practices of the college should 
in all respects be superior to those of the average homes 
represented by its students. That this is not now true 
is a fact to be deplored and remedied. 

Fraternities.^ — Greek letter fraternities, like other 
phases of student activity, may be used for good or may 
become sources of harm. So long as these organizations 
keep out of " college politics " and hold steadily to their 
fundamental purposes of good comradeship and social 
helpfulness their presence should be welcome in any col- 
lege. It sometimes happens that fraternity men can 
reach and correct more effectively than can the college 
authorities wrong influences that may be at work in the 
life of a fellow-member. 

In many places, the fraternities have erected beautiful 
buildings, made safe homes for students, and brought into 

^ Baird's "American College Fraternities"; Report of National Educa- 
tional Association, 1890:707; Thwing, "College Administration." 



THE COLLEGE lOy 

college life a charm and tradition that have been among 
the strongest of constructive influences. 

Athletics. — ^Nluch has been said, pro and con, in the 
last decade, on athletics in colleges. The subject would 
be less obscured and differences of opinion less sharp, if 
it were generally understood that the matter under dis- 
cussion is really intercollegiate competitive athletics, and 
not at all the general question of athletics. There is no 
one who does not believe heartily in the modern doctrine 
that the college is concerned with the physical education 
of its students as well as with their intellectual and moral. 
But there are many, and the number seems to be increas- 
ing, who do not believe that intercollegiate athletic con- 
tests have anything to do with a proper physical educa- 
tion. 

The student, on entering college, should be examined as 
to his physical condition and needs, and be assigned to 
prescribed work in the gymnasium. But it has been 
found that men and w'omen as well as boys and girls need 
outdoor, spontaneous exercise, and therefore college 
students should be encouraged to spend some time every 
day in walking, riding, rowing, bicycling, or in play of 
some sort on the athletic field. 

If all the best that has been said in favor of competi- 
tive athletics be granted as valid so far as it applies to 
the individual student, the objection is not thereby an- 
swered that the benefit reaches but very few of the whole 
number of students, and these usually are least in need 
of the physical benefits supposed to accrue from the 
training. 

If the plea be allowed that athletics develop the ethical 
nature,^ the same objection, that not many are called and 

i"The Ethical Function of Football," N. Am. Rev., 173: 627. 



no ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

very few are chosen, still holds as to individuals ; and the 
further answer may be made that the best of college spirit 
and loyalty can be as well cultivated by other forms of 
intercollegiate rivalries that are more akin to the intel- 
lectual ideals for which colleges are supposed to stand. 
" The Negative Side of Modern Athletics " has been no 
more forcibly presented than in the following terse para- 
graphs : ^ 

" Sport is the one thing in college life which at the pres- 
ent time awakens enthusiasm outside, and it is impossible 
that this fact should be without effect. . . . 

By actions . . . the public, and the educated and 
cultivated portion of the public in particular, say to the 
undergraduate that athletics are of more consequence than 
anything else in a college career. It does not seem possi- 
ble that under such a state of things the student's sense 
of values can escape distortion. . , . 
. . . but the college on the field of sports touches 
nobody as an intellectual ideal ; in that atmosphere it does 
not shine forth as an alma mater of mental nourishment 
or of higher aspirations. . . . 

The indifference of people in general to intellectual 
concerns and their greed for amusement are thus burned 
into boys at the most impressionable period of life, and 
that, too, under the sanction of the very universities of 
which the highest function should be that of nourishing 
the intellectual ideal." ^ 

The Assembly as a Means of Control 

The daily exercises in the chapel of the college should 
be more than merely perfunctory devotional services ; in- 

* Bates, Forum, 31: 287 et scq.; N. Y. Independent, 57: 605. 
^ For further discussion see Forum 16: 634, 32: 309; Harper's Monthly 
loi: 207; Popular Science Monthly 45: 721; Ed. Rev. 2: 453, 9: 100. 



THE COLLEGE m 

deed, in some state institutions religious services are pro- 
hibited by statute. 

Attendance at chapel should not be compulsory ; abso- 
lute freedom to attend or to stay away should be accorded 
to each student. But the greatest care should be taken 
to make the exercises so interesting and so valuable that 
none shall elect to stay away from them. All that was 
said on pp. 49-51 about the daily opening exercises of the 
elementary school applies even more strongly to those of 
the college. The college can not afford to spend less than 
a half hour upon the program of chapel exercises, and 
more time will often be needed. 

Music. — There should always be music ; if the value 
of it for culture and good government were rightly appre- 
ciated no college would be without an organist and a choir 
leader. There should be a choir made up of students, 
and there should also be much congregational singing. 

Scripture Reading and Prayer. — Unless forbidden by 
state statute, Scripture reading and prayer should form 
an essential part of the daily general program of the col- 
lege. The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are so full 
of the best ethical and religious teaching that it is very 
easy to select fruitful passages for devotional exercises, 
and yet avoid giving offense to the most sensitive sec- 
tarianism. 

It seems a mere truism to say that whenever Scripture 
is read and prayer offered in public, the service should be 
done with heartiness, sincerity, and spiritual insight into 
the needs of those who hear. These are especially 
needed in college devotional services. 

Other Exercises. — The daily gathering together of 
the student body and the faculty affords opportunity for 
educational influences that can not be brought to bear so 



112 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

well at any other time. Here should be given simple, 
helpful talks by president and faculty upon manners and 
conduct (the college student never gets too old to need 
such talks) ; upon the living themes of the day, the dis- 
cussion of which will make the students strongly reahze 
that they are part of the great human current ; upon scien- 
tific, historic, or philosophic matters, some knowledge of 
which must be part of the acquirements of every educated 
man, no difference what may be his special line of study ; 
upon the duty and opportunity of young men and women 
to do the world's work and to enjoy the doing. In mak- 
ing up a faculty, the authorities of the college should get 
men and women who can talk to an audience, simply, 
clearly, fluently ;■ there should be no place in a college class 
room or on a college platform for what has been well 
named " dumb scholarship." 

Into this sort of service may be pressed also whoever 
among the visitors to the college are able to help. From 
these may occasionally be had a bit of choice music, a 
narrative of personal experience, words of counsel, a dis- 
cussion of current topics, some presentation of the beau- 
tiful, the edifying, or the amusing, that shall spice the 
whole day's work for every student. In ways like these 
the daily exercises in the college chapel or auditorium 
can be made so valuable to the students that none shall 
choose to stay away. 

But in addition to these means of general culture and 
growth, to be availed of almost every day, there must be 
regular lecture courses, high-class concerts, dramatic en- 
tertainments (these often given by the students them- 
selves), all with the purpose of helping the students to 
the richest life, and making wholesome appeals to the 
varied interests of youth. 



THE COLLEGE 1 13 

Student Cooperation in Collci:;c Govcnuucnt 

Next to the personal force of the teacher, as an influ- 
ence on character and its manifestation in behavior, is the 
personalit}- of follow students. In some cases the latter 
intiuence may even be the stronger of the two. 

It is possible so to reverse traditional college practices 
that the upper-class men shall become the guides and 
counselors of the freshmen hazing, in its older and 
rougher forms, at least, shall be obsolete ; class " rushes " 
shall disappear, and superior intelligence and experience 
shall be brought to do in every way the same sort of 
service in the college that they are expected to do among 
ladies and gentlemen who are not in college. 

The more mature and thoughtful students, working in 
harmony with the faculty, can soon create an atmosphere 
fatal to silly (or worse) pranks, to the vices that eat into 
student life, to cheating and " faking " in recitations and 
examinations, in short, to all the things that so often 
devitalize the higher influences of a college and force the 
professors into police duty. When a student discovers 
that lawless conduct and dishonest practices in the class- 
room are under the ban of any considerable number of 
his fellows he soon changes his ways. Ostracism is more 
potent than rules and regulations and faculty Boards of 
Discipline. 

Such student cooperation as is here indicated, co- 
operation in spirit and in purpose, is the only sort that 
counts. The final authority, in matters of discipline, must 
vest in the faculty, and any such complex machinery as 
student " senates " or " councils," designed to divide 
authority and responsibility with the faculty, is apt to 
break down when put to work. The few cases in which 
such machinery has been somewhat effective only serve 

Roark's Econ. — 8 



114 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

to sliow what a quantity of energy must be put into the 
machine in proportion to the effective work done.^ In 
one respect, indeed, the organization of legislative or 
executive bodies among the students serves to emphasize 
the very thing which it is best to keep in the background, 
the occasional need of discipline and government admin- 
istered from without. Laws and the machinery of their 
execution, whether inside or outside the college, are essen- 
tially for the weak and erratic, for those who can not 
govern themselves from within. The aim of college gov- 
ernment should be to make the student body a self-gov- 
erning community. 

Recalcitrant Cases 

But after all the means have been used for arousing 
the higher interests of students, for appealing to their 
social instincts, for so occupying their time that misuse 
of it wall be difficult, for building a helpful public senti- 
ment, there will still remain some " irreducible material," 
and sharper and more direct methods become necessary. 

" Office Talks." — When a college student shows a 
marked tendency to resist the better influences around 
him and begins to " go wrong," whether the going wrong 
affects himself mainly or the college also, he should be 
quietly called in for a private talk with the president. 
The president must, it is evident, be the sort of man who 
can manage that sort of thing- w.ith skill and decision, and 
the result of the talk should be immediately visible in the 
conduct of the pupil. 

Only in the most flagrant cases of misconduct need the 
faculty be called together for the disciplining of a student. 
There is nothing, ordinarily, which the faculty as a body 

^Consult Educational Review, 3: 162; 8: 442; 13: 412; also Rep. of 
Nat. Ed. Assoc., 1889: 539; 1890: 685. 



THE COLLEGE I i 5 

could do with a refractory case wliich might not be much 
better and more ctTcctively done by the president alone. 

Notice to Parents. — If a student who is under age, or 
but little over, manages to get himself called up a second 
time, kindly and courteous notice of his shortcomings 
should be sent to his parents or guardian. The efforts 
of the college authorities to make matters straight ought 
to be reinforced by the home, and a letter from parents 
to the son or daughter just beginning to step aside from 
the right way is very eft'ective. But even if the college 
secures no aid from the home in giving correction, as 
sometimes happens, yet the parents have a right to know 
the facts in any case involving the behavior of son or 
daughter. 

Suspension. — Suspension for a longer or shorter time 
from all college privileges must be visited upon the stu- 
dent who persists in neglect of duty or disturbs the peace 
of the college. The suspension must be absolute, leaving 
no chance for the culprit to hang around the college and 
annoy or corrupt the orderly or the weak. Immediate 
notice of suspension should be sent to the parents of the 
student. 

Expulsion. — Expulsion is necessary sometimes as a 
last resort, when the student's ways become plainly past 
mending by any of the college influences, and his presence 
becomes a constant menace to good order. It is always 
best that the expulsion should be quietly and privately 
effected ; it is very doubtful whether a public expulsion 
ever had other than an ill effect upon the student body. 
Expulsion is to the college what capital punishment is to 
the state, and it should be as quietly effected ; public ex- 
pulsion is no more defensible than public hanging. Public 
punishment makes a hero or a martyr of the student. 



Ii6 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

D. Closing the Session. 

The same principles of economy are to govern in the 
closing weeks of the college as in those of the lower 
schools. Interest must be sustained to the last and effort 
and accomplishment must not flag. The last week of the 
session should be crowded with such features of interest, 
besides the commencement day exercises, as will attract 
visitors, gratify all who are interested in the growth of 
the true educational ideal, and draw them into a closer 
loyalty to the college. 

The closing exercises may consist in part of an exhibit 
of the material resources of the institution and of the 
power and training which its graduates have secured, and 
in part of one or more addresses which shall review the 
progress of education or of learning, in general and in 
that college, and forecast the next movements forward. 

A College Exposition. — A college will always find it 
worth while to show to the public, in a proper and digni- 
fied way, its material resources. This it should be ready 
to do at any time, but especially at commencement, when 
the number of visitors is large. Along with the opening 
of the class rooms, libraries, and laboratories, for inspec- 
tion, should go also the exposition of such work of the 
students as has been given concrete expression. (Com- 
pare p. 58.) 

Graduates' Day. — While there is a growing tendency 
strongly to modify the old form of commencement exer- 
cises,^ yet neither the general nor the educational public 
will allow the traditional characteristics of commence- 
ment to become wholly obsolete. Certainly the people 
outside the college, who give it in one way or another its 
financial and moral support, have a right to an oppor- 

' Ed. Rev. 2: 79; 9: 427. 



THE COLI.Fa:/: n; 

tiiiiity to judge the iinnictliate results of the work the col- 
lege does. Somewhat of the value of the college should 
appear in the commencement work of its graduates. 

To say, as one writer does, that " the exercises of the 
day, as in general carried out, no longer represent 
progress in educational affairs " ; that " immature stu- 
dents, with little or no practice in public speaking, are 
expected to do what would appall an older and more ex- 
perienced speaker " merely throws the deficiencies of 
much of college work into clearer relief. The speeches of 
the graduates, in subject-matter and delivery, ought to 
" represent progress in educational affairs," and " prac- 
tice in public speaking " is, surely, one of the things a 
college is supposed to give its students constantly through- 
out their four years' stay. If a student can not put some 
part of what he has gained in four years, in knowledge 
and power, into good, clear English, and deliver it with 
force and sincerity to a sympathetic audience, then it must 
be said it is not the student commencement speaker that 
ought to be abolished ! 

But the demand that the graduates shall be given a 
day to themselves and their audiences is reasonable, 
though " graduates' day " should be looked upon as no 
whit less important than commencement day itself. One 
important result of exercises of a high grade of excellence 
on graduates' day, a result which the college ought gladly 
to strive to intensify, is the inspiration and stimulus given 
to the undergraduates and to the young men and women, 
not yet matriculates of the college, who make up so large 
a part of a commencement audience. They should be 
made to feel the spur of ambition, and be quickened with 
a desire to be among those who live the higher life of 
thought and action. 



Il8 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

Commencement Day. — The last day of the closing 
session or term, should be devoted to the bestowal of de- 
grees and the presentation of diplomas, to such other offi- 
cial functions as may be customary, and especially to the 
discussion before the public of some living educational 
problem. The general public rarely has or uses an oppor- 
tunity to hear an expression of expert opinion or experi- 
ence on educational themes. The college commencement, 
rightly looked upon as a popular rather than as a pro- 
fessional event, afifords an excellent opportunity of pre- 
senting to an intelligent but non-professional audience the 
present issues of education. 

The whole plan and purpose of the closing days of col- 
lege must be to continue and distinctly to emphasize the 
year-long and constant function of the college as a source 
and center of educational power, revealing the values of 
the intellectual, the spiritual, and the social life as against 
a gross and corroding materialism. 

(4) THE TEACHERS' TRAINING SCHOOL 

A. Equipment. 
(a) Grounds and Buildings 

The academic work of the teachers' training school 
does not require either buildings or grounds different 
in character from those adapted to the college. 

Model School and Practice School Buildings. — The 
professional work of the traniing school, however, re- 
quires model schools and practice schools for illustrative 
purposes, and the buildings in which these are housed 
should be separate from other buildings and planned 
for their own specific uses. There should be buildings 
for city graded school work and others for rural school 
work, and each kind should be a model for its purpose, 



THE TEACHERS' TRAIMXC SCHOOL 1 19 

showing the very latest and best atlaptation of structure 
to school use, and at the same time illustrating how 
material, construction, and equipment may be made to 
conform to the requirements of climate and other local 
conditions, all at a cost within the reach of the urban and 
rural communities which the training school serves. The 
buildings for the model and the practice rural school 
will in most cases, naturally, be in the country ; and model 
roads leading from the town to these buildings would be 
an excellent, and usually much needed, object lesson. 
There should also be rooms and grounds for the illustra- 
tion of the value of manual training and school gardening. 
(b) Furniture and Apparatus 

For the academic work of the teachers' training school 
the same kind of furniture and apparatus will be needed 
as in the college ; for the best part of the distinctively 
professional work the training school will need peda- 
gogical museums and laboratories. 

Pedagogical Museums. — Aluseums of pedagogy are 
as indispensable to the right study of the history, the 
evolution, and the current practice of education as muse- 
ums of geology and biology are to the intelligent study 
of those sciences. 

The museums of educational history should show (i) 
types of school furniture from the earliest educational 
epochs to the present, (2) samples of school apparatus, 
(3) samples of text-books in all the subjects of the com- 
mon schools and high schools, and (4) pictures of great 
educators, of apparatus of which actual samples are not 
obtainable, and especially of school houses, grounds, and 
decorations. INIany of these pictures may be in the 
form of lantern slides for use in lectures. The model 
school is also a museum, and in it the student should find 



I20 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

for observation and study all that is best in modern edu- 
cational practice. The equipment must be the best, and 
the teaching should all be done by experts in a way to illus- 
trate the latest conclusions of pedagogical science. It will 
usually be found advisable to collect a tuition fee in the 
model school, in order to keep the number of pupils with- 
in proper limits, and to divide the attendance with the 
practice school. Only one model school of each kind — 
urban and rural — is needed. 

Pedagogical Laboratories. — Practice schools are, in 
the truest sense, pedagogical laboratories and if teaching 
is ever to become a science it must be largely by means 
of such laboratories. They are as necessary to the train- 
ing of the teacher and to the scientific study of education 
as chemical and physical laboratories are to the training 
of the physicist and chemist, and to the scientific study of 
physics and chemistry. 

For the proper work of a large teachers' training 
school, several practice schools of each kind — urban and 
rural — will be necessary. They should be used not 
only for testing and training the pupil-teacher, but also 
for " trying out " new educational theories and retesting 
old ones. It may be said here with emphasis that if a 
pupil-teacher fails in the practice school to come up to 
a certain high standard of fitness and skill he should not 
be granted a professional diploma or certificate, no matter 
hozv high his standing may be in the academic work. 
Unfortunately, few state normal schools in this country 
observe this rule. 

Likewise, no theory of teaching should be passed on 
into the model school or published under the authority 
of the training school, unless it gives good results upon 
trial in the practice school. 



THE TEACHERS' TR.-ilMNG SCHOOL 121 

Some strong objections have been urged against prac- 
tice schools, as being too sugestive of the clinical practice 
of vivisection. The plea is made that children are too 
precious and costly to be used as " raw material " upon 
which to test cither new teachers or new theories. The 
best answer that can be made to the objectors is that 
every year thousands of young people who have never 
spent a day in a normal school practice upon the innocents 
without guidance or direction, and it is far better for the 
thousands of children that a few hundreds should be ex- 
perimented upon under the most favorable material con- 
ditions and under expert, sympathetic direction. 

B. Organization and Administration. 

All that has been said of the college under this head 
applies with equal force to the teachers' training school. 

Headquarters for Educational Associations. — The 
training school needs to keep in closer touch with the 
teachers and officials of the elementary schools throughout 
the state, than does the college. To this end it would 
be well to make the training school the headquarters of 
educational meetings of all kinds, placing at the service 
of state and local associations the assembly room, and 
rooms for the use of officers throughout the year. 

Educational Bulletins. — The state training school 
should, in cooperation with the office of the State Super- 
intendent, be active in sending out to teachers and school 
officials all over the state, bulletins embodying the results 
of educational experiments, suggestions of other experi- 
ments to be made by teachers, statistics of education, in- 
terpretations of the school laws, and such other matter 
as would be of interest and value to the teacher at w-ork. 



II. ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 
OF SCHOOL SYSTEMS 

Some of the gravest problems that are presented to the 
educational economist to-day are those involved in organ- 
izing into a system and administering, without waste, the 
agencies of formal education, the schools of a community, 
be it state or city. Several conditions, inherent in our 
forms of government and political methods, increase the 
difficulties of these problems. Money must be had from 
taxpayers who are often indifferent and sometimes hostile 
to public education when it makes demands upon their 
own pockets. Laws governing both the external and in- 
ternal organization of school systems must be made by 
men who often know little and care less about the public 
schools as agencies of education. And the immediate 
administration of the schools is too frequently placed in 
the hands of persons who are either indifferent to their 
responsibilities or undertake them in order to advance 
their own particular interests. 

However, in spite of these things there is going on a 
gradual educational uplift and the children and youth 
are coming into their own ; but it is still pathetically true 
that they do not get adequate returns from the money 
spent for them, and for the time they spend. 

To show how good results have been reached and to 
suggest some other methods of practical economy, are the 
objects of the following pages. 

122 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 123 

(i) ORGANIZATION AND INTERRELATION OF 
SCHOOL UNITS 

A. The State System. 

(a) The Rural Elementary SchooP 

However good the schools of a state may be, individ- 
ually, there is no " system " unless the several schools of 
like g-rade are organized upon a common plan and all 
schools owing their existence to state legislation are 
brought into relationship to one another in work and 
results. 

The first question to be answered in the attempt to con- 
struct a state system of schools is that of maintenance, or 
financial support ; and the second is the interrelation of 
schools into an organic system. 

Maintenance - 
Sources of School Revenues. — Although some rev- 
enue is derived from state lands, Federal land grants, and 
various other such sources, the largest part of the money 
with which public schools are supported must come from 
taxation, state and local. Money to be paid out from the 
state treasury may come from the interest upon a perma- 
nent state fund, or from the proceeds of an annual tax, or 
from both. The state should supply a part of the money 
in order that a fixed minimum of income may be always 
available in each community, and in order that, as in some 
states, the weaker schools may receive special help. But 
however much the state may pay in support of schools, 
the greater part, or at least an equal part, of the whole 
amount devoted to elementary and secondary education, 
should be derived from local taxation. 

^ Ed. Rev. 10: 170. 

^ See the " Report of the Committee of Twelve," University of Chicago 
Press. 



124 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Local Taxation Best. — Responsibility for the proper 
spending of money is most apt to be felt when it is de- 
rived from a direct local tax. A community usually looks 
upon any sum coming from the state treasury as a sort 
of gift, and the old proverb, " comes easy, goes easy," 
applies. To receive from the state all or the larger part 
of the money used in support of public schools deadens 
the nerve of local interest and so of local effort. This 
condition has long been the curse of public education in 
some sections of this country. The schools have been, 
and are, supported almost solely by the state, and this, 
coupled with the name " free schools," has made almost 
ineradicable the idea that the schools are for charitable 
purposes and have no just claim upon the childless tax- 
payer. A good local tax means local interest, local effort, 
and personal concern to secure economical expenditure 
and the best results. 

The Local Unit of Taxation.^ — There can be no 
doubt that the single school district is the least desirable 
unit of taxation, and it only remains to determine what 
larger unit should be used. The county is the best in 
all states which are made up of small counties, and in 
which the county is the practical unit of civil organiza- 
tion, both of which conditions are true in most of the 
southern states. The township system is the best in 
states whose counties are relatively large, and where the 
township (or town) is usually the civil unit. There 
should be as little duplication as possible of the machinery 
for collecting and distributing money for the purposes 
of community life, and therefore the school unit and the 
civil suit should, when possible, be coextensive. 

^ See the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1894—5; 2: 1457; 
Educational Review 16: 254, 435; and 17: 465; Reports of National Educa- 
tional Association, '90: 432, and '91: 211. 



INrERRELATlOX OF SCHOOL UNITS 125 

The Distribution of School Money. — In practice and 
tlieory alike it seems best for school sites to be bought, 
houses to be built and equipped, provision for all inci- 
dental expenses, repairs, fuel, light, etc., and a part of 
the teacher's salary, to come out of the local revenue, and 
for all of the state revenue to be applied to the payment 
of teachers. 

The real proI)leni of distribution is that of a just basis 
of allotment to the smaller school communities. There 
are two methods of distributing school money : first, an 
allotment according to the school census ; second, an allot- 
ment of a fixed sum to each district. Each of these modes 
of distribution is modified to suit different localities, and 
in some cases both are combined. That method of dis- 
tribution is nearest the ideal, which gives special aid to 
the weaker school communities, and at the same time 
stimulates the teachers' professional zeal, and encourages 
local interest in the schools in respect both to attendance 
and to financial support. 

The " Fixed Sum " Plan. — Some states, of which 
New Jersey is a type, allot a fixed sum for each district. 
This plan puts districts upon an equal footing and gives 
as much support to the weak as to the strong. Other 
states, as California, allot a fixed sum for each teacher, 
which serves practically the same purpose as that of allot- 
ment to the district. Either mode of distribution tends 
to cause a multiplication of districts and teachers, but this 
tendency may be corrected by legal limitations. 

The " School Census " Plan.— The method of allot- 
ment at a per capita rate based on the number of children 
of school age has the merit of simplicity and the demerit 
of little regard for the relative financial strength or weak- 
ness of school communities. However, the demerit is not 



126 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

so grave as it appears. The most teaching is needed 
where are the most children, and very generally the most 
children are to be found in the poorer districts. A modi- 
fication of the census plan, in effect in California and New 
Hampshire, is based upon attendance. Such a modifica- 
tion is good in communities where there is no compulsory 
attendance law, and is helpful in the enforcement of such 
law where it exists. 

A Composite Plan. — A composite plan of distribution, 
embodying the best features of the modes in vogue in 
states which have given most consideration to this matter, 
may be outlined as follows : 

( 1 ) The state money should be allotted to the county 
(or township) in proportion to the school census, with the 
proviso that the county (or township) shall raise by taxa- 
tion a sum bearing a fixed ratio to the amount received 
from the state. This ratio should hardly be less than one 
third. 

(2) The further apportionment of the total fund, less 
a five per cent reserve, should be made by the county (or 
township) superintendent, or treasurer, on the basis of the 
grade of certificate held by each teacher actually employed, 
contracts with teachers having all been drawn prior to the 
time of such apportionment.^ The discussion of the cer- 
tification of teachers may be anticipated here enough 
to say that for the purposes of the apportionment in- 
dicated above there need be but four grades of certifi- 
cates at most, two granted by county authority and two 
granted (or indorsed) by the state. The payment of 
money to the teachers may be made on a fixed minimum 

1 In Indiana, the law provides that the daily wages of teachers " shall 
not be less than an amount determined by multiplying two and one-half 
cents by the general average " on the teacher's certificate; School Law of 
Indiana, 1901, p. 215. 



INTERRELATIOX OF SCHOOL UNITS i _>; 

of salary as a basis, or the whole aniouiU may be divided 
according- to a series of ratios. l'"or example, the fixed 
minimum salary may be $300, and the other salaries mul- 
tiples of this; and the ratios, in ascending scale, ma\- be 1, 
1^2, 2, 23.4 • Thus, if the method of a fixed minimum 
be followed, teachers holding the lowest grade of certifi- 
cate will receive $300 each for their services ; those hold- 
ing higher grades will receive $450, $600, and $675 re- 
spectively. If the method of a series of ratios, starting 
from a variable, base, be used, then a county (or town- 
ship ) having a net sum of $40,000 to be distributed among 
eighty teachers, ten holding the lowest certificate, fifty 
holding the next higher, twelve the next, and eight the 
highest, would pay to each of the ten a minimum of 
$314.90, to each of the next a minimum of $472.35, and 
so on up. 

(3) The five per cent reserve and the sum derived by 
neglecting fractions of cents in the division, should con- 
stitute a fund for encouraging attendance, and should be 
placed to the credit of such districts as show during the 
school term a certain percentage of average attendance ; 
perhaps seventy-five per cent of the enrollment would not 
be too low a requirement. 

Advantages of the Composite Plan. — It is believed 
that several marked advantages inhere in the plan of dis- 
tribution outlined in the preceding paragraphs. 

In the first place, the method is simple and easily adapt- 
able to local conditions anywhere ; there is a minimum of 
machinery about it. 

The distribution of state money to counties or town- 
ships on the basis of the school census lends the aid of the 
state, as a rule, to the localities where the need of teachers 
is greatest. 



128 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

The requirement that the smaller taxing unit (the 
county or the township) shall supplement the amount 
received from the state brings home to the people their 
responsibility and duty of self-help. Leaving this sup- 
plementary sum in the hands of the local authorities to 
expend increases the interest in the schools and strength- 
ens the feeling of responsibility for their right manage- 
ment. 

Payment of teachers according to the grade of their 
certificates must exert a powerful and direct influence in 
the direction of more thorough academic and professional 
preparation and higher standards. If dififerences in 
grades of certificates mean anything they should mean 
differences in capacity, and greater capacity, or less, 
should mean a larger salary, or less. 

Another decided advantage of payment according to 
the grade of certificate is found in the fact that under 
such plan the weakest district may have a strong teacher ; 
indeed, the smaller districts will be the more eagerly 
sought by teachers, because of the lighter labor demanded 
in the small schools. 

The equitable distribution of the five per cent reserve 
on the basis of average attendance would have an effect 
altogether good. This money should be passed to the 
credit of the district upon the books of the superintendent 
or treasurer, and its use should by law be limited to build- 
ing, repairing, or furnishing. Such an arrangement 
would quicken in each taxpayer a personal interest in 
securing good attendance throughout the school session. 

Siipcrz'isioii and Adininistrat'wn 
The State Superintendent. — At the head of the school 
system in each state is a superintendent, or some official 
with similar title and functions. In few states, however. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL IWITS 



129 



does the stale supcriiileiulenl ha\e, umlcr the law, other 
than clerical duties. In some cases he has also, to a lim- 
ited extent, judicial and executive functions relative to the 
school laws. Beyond prescribing a course of study, or 
daily program, he has usually but little power as a super- 
visor of schools ; he can only recommend educational 
policy. 

But while the legal duties of the state superintendent 
are thus limited, he may do most important and excellent 
service to the cause of education. His counsel is always 
sought and often followed by legislative committees 
charged with the task of making changes in the school 
law. If, therefore, the state superintendent be a man of 
strong personality and clear-cut views of educational 
needs, he can have a direct and helpful influence upon 
school legislation. So also if to personal force and clear- 
ness of educational vision, he can add fluency and ade- 
quacy of expression, if he is a " good talker," he can 
accomplish decided results among teachers and people. 
He should go over the state, visiting and addressing 
teachers' institutes and associations and popular meetings 
gathered in the interests of education. He must be in 
the highest sense an educational evangelist. No one 
should be eligible to the office of state superintendent 
who has not had abundant and successful experience as a 
teacher, and the pay and opportunity of doing good serv- 
ice to educational progress should both be such as to tempt 
the best equipped men to accept the office. The state 
superintendent should be c.v oificio a member of the board 
of trustees of each state educational institution. His op- 
portunities, in such a position, would be excellent for reen- 
forcing the educational influences of the state. 

The State Board of Education. — The state boards of 

Roark's Econ. — 9 



I30 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

education in the different states have widely varied duties 
prescribed by law. The functions which seem distinctive, 
and that justify the creation of such a board as a part of 
a state's educational machinery, are ( i ) to frame courses 
of study and reading for pupils and teachers, (2) to pre- 
scribe general rules and regulations for the management 
of the schools, and (3) to examine and certify qualified 
applicants for state certificates. In not a few instances 
the state board of education and the state board of exam- 
iners are distinct bodies. In some states the board of edu- 
cation is made up of ex officio members, being composed 
of the secretary of state, attorney general, and the heads 
of the different state educational institutions ; in others, 
the members of the board are elected, and in still others 
they are appointed by the governor or by the state super- 
intendent. In whatever way the board is created, the 
state superintendent should be either its chairman or secre- 
tary, with authority to direct, or to take a prominent part 
in, the deliberations and acts of the board. 

The County Superintendent. — Nearly all of the states 
have county supervising officers. As a rule, in all these 
states the authority of the county superintendent is over 
only the rural schools. There is practically imanimous 
agreement among students of education to-day that the 
rural schools need close, intelligent supervision throughout 
a county, or some smaller unit of school organization. 

To give such supervision men and women must be 
chosen as superintendents who, by scholarship, profes- 
sional training, and successful experience, are properly 
qualified for the work. A recognition of this truth is 
embodied in law in many states, and no one is eligible to 
a county superintendency who does not hold a legal cer- 
tificate of qualification. If such a safeguard be properly 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 131 

observed, it matters little whether the supervising officer 
he elected or appointed. Like the state superintendent, 
the county superintendent should be competent to address 
persuasively and convincingly any public gathering, and 
be able to show the need and value of sound education. 
A large part of his work should be educational evangeliza- 
tion. 

Duties of the County Superintendent. — The county 
(or township) superintendent is the most important 
school officer in the whole rural school system. Through 
his active service the uplift of the schools must come, or 
through his inefficiency or neglect occur their degenera- 
tion and decay. In addition to his clerical duties he dis- 
charges, in most states, executive and even judicial func- 
tions also. He grants and, for sufficient reasons, revokes 
certificates ; orders the erection or repairing of school- 
houses ; creates new districts ; holds institutes ; and decides 
minor points of law. In some states where there is no 
county treasurer, the distribution of the school fund is one 
of the most important duties of the county superintendent. 
In addition to these things he is required by law to visit 
and supervise all the schools in his county. 

The County Board of Education. — The most econom- 
ical administration of the educational business of a county 
(or township) can be secured through a county (or town- 
ship) board of education, rather than through purely local 
district boards of directors acting independently in each 
district. 

Such a board of education should be empowered by law 
to contract for the erection and repair of houses, the pur- 
chase of all supplies, the employment and dismissal of 
teachers, the selection of text-books, and the levying of 
the county or township school tax. The authority and 



132 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

work of the county board should be supplemented in each 
local district by not more than one district trustee or 
director, who may be either elected, or appointed by the 
county superintendent, and whose duties should be to visit 
the school, look after its equipment, make requisition upon 
the county board for needed supplies, and report upon the 
character of the work done. Where truant officers are 
needed, these district trustees may also serve as such. 

Advantages of a County Board. — The advantages of 
placing the administration of the schools of a county or 
township in the hands of a central board are recognized 
by educators, but in a theoretical rather than a practical 
way. Very few states have so far adopted the plan of 
a central board so fully as above outlined. The chief ad- 
vantages of such a plan are evident. 

(i) It uses the civil unit as the unit of scliool adminis- 
tration. 

(2) It dignifies the office of school trustee by making 
it a county office and thus secures the selection of better 
men than the present average local trustees. It is a fact 
which speaks for itself that in any given county the aver- 
age of intelligence and of official competency is higher in 
county (or township) commissioners, or supervisors, or 
in a fiscal court, than in a local district board of trustees. 
The people of a community are much more watchful of 
the official acts of county officers, and hold these officers 
to a stricter account than in the case of lesser officials. 

(3) In consequence of these facts it would be much 
more difficult to bribe or otherwise wrongly influence a 
county or township board than a local board, and the 
members would in every way be further removed from 
petty local influences. 

Some test should be used to determine the fitness of 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 133 

persons to serve on this county board of education. The 
members should be graduates of the i)ul)lic schools whose 
interests they arc supposed to have under their care. 

A Complete County System. — The general i^lan 
above suggested could be much more simply and therefore 
effectively applied if the rural schools of a county and the 
town and city schools, except in the case of the large 
cities, were all placed upon the same footing and under 
the same administration. The practical working of 
such a plan has been for many years most successfully 
illustrated in Richmond County, Georgia.^ The funda- 
mental principle seems fully operative there, that educa- 
tion is the duty of the whole community, and that the 
wealth of the community as a whole should be laid under 
tribute for the discharge of this duty. In that county 
the rural schools and those in the towns are under the 
same board and superintendent, the teachers in town and 
county receive the same wages for the same grade of 
work, the school terms are the same length, and the pupils 
receive the same advantages. 

The plan has received the indorsement of the Commit- 
tee of Twelve on Rural Schools, whose report says, 
" The subcommittee confidently believes that this mode 
of school organization has a great future before it in 
the United States." The strange fact is that this simple 
and economical method of administering the schools of a 
county has not been used in other states. All that can 
justly be said about the plan at all must be said in 
its favor. 

Teachers 

Responsibility for the condition of the schools in a given 
community will be found moving in a circle ; if the people 

^ Ed. Rev. 11:369; "Report of the Committee of Twelve," p. 132. 



134 



ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION. 



were more awake on educational matters they would re- 
quire better service of school boards ; if there were better 
school boards, with awakened public sentiment behind 
them they would employ better teachers ; if the teachers 
ivere better, they zvould make the coiiununity sensitive to 
its educational needs, or would at least bring up another 
generation that would be educationally progressive. The 
gravest indictment that can be brought against the com- 
mon schools is the fact that the citizenship which they 
produce is so indifferent as it is to them and their work. 
So it would seem that, in the last analysis, the responsi- 
bility for educational conditions, good or bad, lies with 
the teachers- 
Elements of Fitness. — Before a teacher is certificated 
as such, his fitness must be ascertained, and to determine 
this it is necessary to know what elements constitute fit- 
ness to teach. 

School communities, when unbiased by merely local 
considerations, have recognized in greater or less degree 
that the elements of fitness found in the good teacher are 
physical wholeness and soundness, knowledge of subject- 
matter, professional skill, unquestionable morals, and a 
liberal culture at whose core is an enthusiastic and mag- 
netic personality. 

No method has been formulated, or can be, for deter- 
mining the presence of all these elements in the person of 
an applicant for a teacher's certificate. 

Physical Wholeness. — In no state, yet, is an applicant 
for a teacher's certificate required to present any evidence 
of physical fitness to enter upon the labors of the school- 
room. But a growing knowledge of the causes and com- 
municability of disease, and of the relation between a 
sound body and mental fitness will soon bring parents to 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 135 

the point of demanding that a teacher's certificate shall 
vouch for his soundness of body. Children are highly 
susceptible to untoward intiuences, as well as to those that 
are favorable, and the wholesome efficiency of any teacher 
would be greatly diminished by marked deformity, or 
ugliness of form or feature ; and the pupils would be im- 
periled if they were in charge of a teacher who had any 
communicable disease, such as consumption. 

Knowledge of Subject-matter. — Although even the 
" man in the street " would assent to the proposition that 
the teacher must know his subject, yet few examining 
boards hold the standard so high as to insure on the part 
of teachers clear and accurate knowledge of fundamental 
facts and their relations in the common-school subjects. 
Of course, a teacher should know his subject beyond the 
limits of any one text-book ; text-books are for pupils, not 
for teachers, and Goethe has said, " Nothing is more 
frightful than a teacher who knows only what the pupils 
are expected to know." The most reliable evidence of a 
teacher's adequate knowledge of a subject is not the " per 
cent " shown on his certificate, but his ability to con- 
duct a recitation in that subject, zvithout a text-book in 
hand. 

Professional Skill. — Very slowly the fact that knowl- 
edge does not necessarily give power, much less skill, is 
forcing a recognition. Many holders of high-grade 
certificates fail in the schoolroom ; with knowledge of 
arithmetic or science does not by any means always go 
ability to teach arithmetic or science. Some things most 
essential to successful teaching, namely, sound common 
sense, abounding enthusiasm, and abiding character, can 
not be tested by any sort of formal examination. These 
can be evidenced only through teaching, not merely the 



136 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

artificial teaching in a practice scliool, but teaching under 
the complex conditions of the multi-graded rural school. 

It is but right to demand, then, in the name of the chil- 
dren, that no one, no matter what his scholarship may be, 
shall be given other than a probationary certificate until 
he has first proved his teaching power by marked success 
in the management and teaching of a school. The super- 
vision of the rural teachers' work must be intelligent 
enough and close enough to enable the supervising author- 
ity to give trustworthy testimony to the teachers' profes- 
sional fitness or lack of it, and if, as often happens, pro- 
fessional power does not develop during the probationary 
period, then an advanced certificate should not be granted 
at all. 

Moral Character. — The importance of sound morality 
of thought and life in one who would teach has long been 
recognized, and the recognition is incorporated directly or 
indirectly in the law of every state. Applicants for cer- 
tificates must present evidence of moral fitness before 
entering upon examination ; and in most states the county 
superintendent is required by law to cancel the certificate 
of any teacher who is guilty of a lapse from morality. 

A safe rule for an examining board to follow in deter- 
mining the moral fitness of an applicant is, " The ethical 
level of the teacher's life must be much higher than the 
average level of the whole community." 

Culture. — All the elements so far enumerated as nec- 
essary to the equipment of a teacher are to be found in 
varying degree in the something we agree to call " cul- 
ture." But having all these, the teacher may yet lack 
culture. Health, adequate knowledge of subject-matter, 
professional spirit and skill, and sound morals must be 
interfused with a genial and strong personality, some ex- 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 137 

perieiice of the polite world and its conventions, and an 
easy familiarity with the cin'rent movements in the more 
important departments of human activity. If it be said 
that in the last few paragraphs a rather high standard is 
set for rural teachers who work for an average of thirty 
to fifty dollars a month, then the answer must be that 
without high standards no progress is possible, and 
that the best is hardly good enough for the children of the 
country. Individually they have a right to as good teach- 
ing as any other children, and collectively they constitute 
about two thirds of the total school population. 

Certification of Teachers ^ 

Until the work of elementary teaching becomes a pro- 
fession and is so recognized, some such methods as at 
present in vogue will be used for ascertaining the approxi- 
mate fitness of a man or woman to discharge the duties 
of a teacher. In the majority of cases the methods of cer- 
tification rest at bottom upon an examination either con- 
ducted directly by the certificating authorities or held as 
a prerequisite to the obtaining of a training school diploma 
which may be indorsed by the certificating board. It 
needs but little argument to show that an examination, 
which as usually conducted is chiefly a test of memory, 
is essentially a wrong basis upon which to rest the declara- 
tion of a person's fitness to teach. 

To grant certificates based solely upon an examination, 
or to accept training school diplomas also based mainly 
upon examinations, is perhaps the present best that can be 
done in the case of persons just entering the ranks of 
teachers. But any certificate legally good for a longer 

'•"Report of Com. of Twelve," p. 90; Circ. of Information No. 6, 1888, 
Bureau of Ed., Wash.; Circ. of Information No. 2, 1889, Bureau of Ed., 
W'ash. See also School Laws of various States. 



138 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

time than one year should be based also upon properly 
attested successful experience. 

Number and Grades of Certificates. — Not more than 
four grades of certificates need be granted under state 
and county authority, to those who are to teach in rural 
schools, including rural high schools. The county exam- 
ining board should grant two grades, good for one and 
four years respectively, and usable only in the county of 
issue ; and the state examining board should grant two 
grades, one good for eight years and usable within the 
limits of the state in any school directly under the state 
or county authority below the high school. 

The higher state certificate should be good for life, 
except in case of failure for two consecutive years to do 
some sort of educational work, and should entitle its 
holder to teach in any school of a rank not higher than 
that of a first-class high school. 

The difference in grade in these certificates should be 
based upon scholarship, professional training, and terms 
of experience, the two highest being granted only in rec- 
ognition of high academic acquirements, tested experi- 
ence, and specific professional training. 

Employment of Teachers 

Teachers should be employed by township or county 
boards of education, not by local district boards. Em- 
ployment by local boards is too apt to be governed by 
nepotism or other forms of favoritism. The county or 
township board should meet on a given date, previous to 
which all applicants for schools should have been required 
to file their applications, certificates, and testimonials, and 
should within a legal limit of five days assign teachers to 
the schools, and fix the dates upon which the schools 
should open. 



INTERRELATIOX OF SCHOOL UNITS 139 

The teacher should be employed for the whole term of 
school. In some places the wretched practice obtains of 
dividing the school term among' two or more teachers, in 
order that each may have a little share of the public 
money ! One of the most evil of present rural school 
conditions is the short tenure of position in any one place 
by the same teacher.^ To remedy this, employing boards 
should use every means available. Contracts might be 
made for two or more }-ears with teachers holding the 
higher certificates. 

Length of School Term 

According to the Report of the Commissioner of Edu- 
cation for 1899-1900, tw^o states, Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut, report an annual term of 189 days, and the length 
of the term runs all the way down from that figure to 70.8 
days in North Carolina. In most states a minimum term 
is fixed by law, but in few is it sufficient. In no case 
should a rural school remain in session for a shorter time 
than seven school months. If every state should fix the 
minimum term at this number of months, there would soon 
be a marked decrease in the percentage of illiteracy. No 
really economical use can be made of the pupils' time and 
energy in a shorter time than this. 

But, not counting the indifference of the people, which 
is the gravest of all obstacles to progress, there are in 
some parts of the country at least two practical difficulties 
in the way of extending the school term. These are a 
lack of money with which to pay adequate wages and 
provide schoolhouses that can be used in the winter 
months, and the other, indirectly attributable to the same 
cause, is bad roads. For these things the sole remedy is 
education. 

^Report of National Educational Association, '87: 307. 



140 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Spring Schools. — Many states in which the length of 
the term is correctly reported officially as only four or five 
months, yet actually have a longer term. After the regu- 
lar public school is taught, a " spring school " is organized 
and continued for two or three months. The spring 
school is a " subscription school," in many instances being 
supported wholly by the subscriptions of a few well-to-do 
families in the district. There appears to be no good 
reason why men of wealth should not endow elementary 
schools as well as the college or university.^ 

The spring school should receive from the local and 
county authorities semi-official recognition and encour- 
agement, in all cases, at least, where it is practically im- 
possible to extend the term by a local tax. No one who 
does not hold a legal certificate, or its equivalent, should 
be permitted to use the public schoolhouse for a sub- 
scription school, and the permission to use the house 
should always be given with the proviso that the school 
shall he free to all children of school age in the district. 

Voluntary Teaching. — In North Carolina, and possi- 
bly other states, in order to lengthen the school term, 
students in state or private teachers' training schools are 
encouraged to supplement the regular term in the rural 
schools with two or three months of teaching without 
other compensation than board and lodging. Good re- 
sults for the schools are reported, and certainly the train- 
ing the pupil teacher gets in that way is as practical and 
valuable as that afforded by " practice work " in the 
teachers' training schools, more so, in fact, for the teacher 
gets the training of the " first day " of school. 

' A splendid object lesson has been given by the Hon. J. H. Stout 
in endowing public schools at Menomonie, Wis. See World's Work, 
7: 4540. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 141 

Coiiccntratioii of Rural ScJiooIs 
The plan known as " consolidation of schools and trans- 
portation of pupils " ^ has been found a potential remedy 
for many ills that affect rural schools. It has received 
the unqualified indorsement of school authorities wher- 
ever it has been tried, and it has been tried in such widely 
separated and different parts of this country (in Massa- 
chusetts, Ohio, Iowa, and Florida, for example), that a 
general conclusion as to its efficacy may be safely drawn. 
Under this plan small, weak schools are abolished, a 
large building is erected at some central point, and men 
are employed to transport the pupils from home to school, 
and back, in covered wagons. Some of the more marked 
results have been found to be (i) largely increased at- 
tendance and no tardiness; (2) better health of the chil- 
dren by reason of more comfortable schoolhouses and 
protection from bad weather in going to and from school ; 
(3) larger wages for teachers and therefore better teach- 
ers and longer terms, by reason of not having to divide 
the money among several districts ; (4) the better grad- 
ing and classifying of pupils, and consequent opportun- 
ities for using improved methods of teaching ; ( 5 ) great- 
er social solidarity in the community. 

Here educational economy and political economy come 
into contact, for consolidation of schools is hardly possible 
without good roads. The only cure for isolation is to 
facilitate transit from place to place. 

1 Report of the Committee of Twelve, p. 135; School Review, 8: 213, 
335; Report of the Nat. Commissioner of Ed. 1894-S, 2: 1469; 1895-6, 2: 
1353; Report of the State Supt. of Iowa for 1900; Wisconsin State Super- 
intendent's Bulletin No. 5 (1900); Bulletin No. 71 (1901) Penna. Dept. 
of .\griculture; "The Consolidation of School Dists., etc.," Dept. of Pub. 
Inst., Neb., (1903); Educational Review, 20:241; Report of Nat. Com- 
missioner of Ed., '99-'oo, 2: 2581; same for 1901: 161, 2396; Proceedings 
of N. E. A., '01: 293; Proceedings of N. E. A., '02: 224, 793. 



142 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Compulsory Attendance ^ 

A logical corollary to the proposition that the state and 
the local community shall supply the means of education 
for all, is that all shall use the means afforded. Any 
argument valid for public education is equally valid for 
compulsory school attendance. 

This proposition is far reaching and like many others 
in educational economy touches political economy and 
sociology at several points. Since compulsory laws, in 
order to avoid conflict with the constitutional guarantee 
of religious liberty, must provide that parents may send 
their children to schools other than the public schools, 
if they so desire, the question of at least indirect state 
supervision of private or parochial schools is also in- 
volved. 

It seems clear that states in which compulsory attend- 
ance laws are in force have a right to require that private 
schools, to which children may be sent under the condi- 
tions of the law, shall come up to a certain standard of 
work. Morally, the state has no right to enforce attend- 
ance anywhere unless the teaching is good, the houses 
comfortable and safe, and the roads in proper condition 
for travel during the time attendance is required. A 
compulsory attendance law must be reenforced by laws 
regulating or forbidding child labor in mills, factories, 
sweat-shops, and mines.- Enlightened public sentiment is 
beginning to demand legislation also regulating the labor 
of women in these places, as having a very direct bearing 

•■Reports of the Nat. Commissioner of Ed. for 1888— g, i: 470; 1894— s, 
i: 1118; 1895—6, 2: 1350. For the practical working of compulsory at- 
tendance laws, see the Report of the National Commissioner for 1893—4, 2: 
1351, et seq., and reports of State Superintendents. 

"Rep. of Nat. Commissioner of Ed., '99— '00, 2: 2598; Bulletin of Bureau 
of Labor (Wash.), May, 1904. 



INTERRELATIOX OF SCHOOL UNITS 143 

upon the physical and mental capacity of children to use 
the schools the state provides. Intimately bound up with 
the matter of compulsory attendance is the question of 
schools for truants and incorrigibles.^ 

It has been clearly demonstrated that a compulsory 
law is practically a dead letter, unless provision is made 
for special truant officers with power of arrest. 

Text-book Supply 

Every state has carefully drawn laws defining- the 
terms and condition of text-book supply." But while 
the common purpose of all these laws is to safeguard the 
public against possible fraud or extortion the methods 
used to accomplish this differ widely. 

The State as Publisher. — California publishes the 
school books used in the public schools. Indiana may, 
legally, either publish school books or contract with pri- 
vate companies to supply them. Other states have con- 
sidered the expediency of publishing the books to be used 
in their public schools, but have so far not done so. 

The Bonded Contract. — In some states a state board 
fixes the prices at wdiich the books shall be sold, and asks 
for bids from book publishers to supply them at these 
prices, accepted bids to be guaranteed by bond. 

Some form of the contract plan seems to afford ample 
protection to consumers against over-charges for books, 
and at the same time secures, through open competition, 
the best books published anywhere. 

^ This phase of educational management receives very full exposition, 
historical and descriptive, in the Report of the National Commissioner of 
Education for 1899— 1900, i : 85. Abundant references upon the subject 
will also be found there. See also N. E. A. Report, 1901: 820. 

- For a digest of these laws consult the Report of the Commissioner of 
Education for 1893—4, P- 1063, et seq., and for 1897—8, p. 893. Consult 
current reports of State Supts. for latest changes. 



144 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

State Uniformity in Text-books. — Those who advo- 
cate the pubHshing- of text-books by the state usually 
urge the resulting uniformity throughout the state as a 
marked advantage. Such uniformity, however, if it 
should prove desirable, can easily be secured by the 
bonded contract plan. But it is not at all certain that 
state uniformity is desirable ; the only fact clearly in its 
favor is that parents, upon moving from one district or 
county into another, will not be obliged to buy new books. 

Free Text-books. — Another experiment in educational 
economy, which is enthusiastically indorsed by states that 
have tried it, is that of loaning text-books to all public 
school pupils. It is argued that books are the most 
necessary means by the use of which pupils are enabled 
to take advantage of the state's provision for elementary 
education, that there is as much reason for a free supply 
of books as for a free supply of charts, maps, and other 
apparatus. The validity of this line of argument must 
be admitted at once; the most forcible objection to free 
books is on the score of expediency ; can the state, or 
some smaller community, economically afford the first 
cost of the books, the cost of repairs, and of the 
machinery of distribution? At least one borough in 
Pennsylvania answered the question affirmatively in 1893, 
by reporting that books were furnished all pupils at 
an average cost of eighty-three cents per pupil. 

(b) The Rural High School 

A connecting link between primary state education and 
the colleges of the state is necessary to make a state sys- 
tem effective. Formal education must be a continuous 
process, and this it can not be, so far as the state is con- 
cerned, if a gap is left between the elementary schools 
and the colleges. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 145 

" Universal education " must be interpreted to mean 
universal elementary education only, unless there are 
facilities by which all may have opportunity to get the 
full measure of education ofifered by the state. One ele- 
ment of true economy consists in securing- the largest re- 
turns upon an investment. The state makes a very heavy 
investment in college and university, and it is wasteful 
not to provide for bringing under the influence of these 
higher institutions the greatest possible number of bright 
young minds. 

The connecting link between the elementary and the 
higher education is the high school, and to its advantages 
the children of the country have as clear a title as the 
children of the city. This fact is recognized in several 
states,^ and township high schools are provided for by 
law, to which graduates from the elementary schools are 
admitted, and the graduates from which may in turn 
enter, upon diploma or certificate, the freshman classes 
of the higher state institutions. The expense of the 
rural high school is borne by the township as a whole, or 
by tuition fees paid by the district for each common 
school graduate attending from that district. 

County High Schools. — In states where the county, 
instead of the township, is the unit, there should be main- 
tained a county high school. Part of its support should 
come from a county tax and part from fees paid by each 
school district for the pupils it has in attendance. 

In most instances, the larger towns of a county have 
fairly well organized high schools, and economy demands 
that arrangements should be made with these for admit- 
ting the graduates of the elementary rural schools. The 

1 See especially the School Laws of Mass., Vt., Conn., Ohio, j\Iinn.; also 
The School Review, Vol. 8: 213, 335; 12: 148, 267; Report of the Nat. 
Commissioner of Ed. '99— 'oo, i : 643. 
Roark's Econ. — 10 



146 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

question of transportation of pupils, already mentioned 
on p. 141, is intimately bound up with that of rural high 
schools. When both questions are answered properly 
and together, the country boys and girls will find a broad 
and open highway from their doors to the state univer- 
sity ; and this is undeniably their right. 

(c) The College and University 
The closing sentence of the preceding paragraph as- 
sumes that it is the business of the state to provide the 
higher education, and the assumption has perhaps suffi- 
cient support in the fact that in nearly every state is 
found at least one institution of collegiate or university 
rank, sustained at public expense. The character of ad- 
vanced state education and the limit of the state's duty 
in providing it, are matters by no means settled and it is 
not proposed to discuss them here, the present concern 
being with the question as to what is the place of higher 
institutions in a state system, and how they shall be cor- 
related with other parts of that system.^ 

Position of the College.- — The college is to-day in 
danger of losing its distinctive character, through both 
the encroachments of the high school, and its own am- 
bitious attempts at work properly belonging only in the 
sphere of the university. But a strong reaction from 
this abnormal condition is now making itself felt, and the 
college will doubtless soon take its rightful place between 
the high school and the university. In a complete sys- 
tem of schools, there is where it should be and discharge 

1 " Care and Culture of Men," (Jordan) Whitaker & Ray Co., San 
Francisco. 

= " Opportunity of the Small College," Atlantic Monthly, 87: 763; "The 
American College in the Twentieth Century," Atlantic Monthly, 85: 219; 
" The Encroachment of the College Upon the University," International 
Monthly, 3: 634; "Differences Between the College and the University," 
Educational Review, 8: 26. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS. 147 

its distinctive functions without having them encroached 
upon by the high school and without trying- fruitlessly to 
ape those of the university. 

If a state is too poor properly to establish and main- 
tain a university, and most states are, then it would be 
simple wisdom and economy to make the highest state 
institution a real college doing thoroughly the work of a 
college and that only. 

If the state can and does properly support a state uni- 
versity, economy does not necessarily demand that all the 
higher educational work, that of the college as well as that 
of the university, shall be under one management and at 
the same place. In either case, whether the state under- 
takes only the work of a college or assumes also that of a 
university, the fact must be clearly kept in view that at 
least one purpose of a college is to prepare its graduates 
to undertake, if they choose, a university training. The 
college should receive the graduates of the high school 
and pass them on, if they desire to go, to the university; 
no one of these three educational agencies should do the 
work of either of the other two ; in a state system there 
should be no waste of time or loss of work already done, 
in passing from one institution to another. 

Voluntary Systemization of Schools. — There are 
many schools working on private endowment and having 
no connection with the state except through their charters. 
The largest universities of this country, the denominational 
colleges, and a host of private secondary schools belong 
to this class. It would be great economy not only to 
the individual school but to the whole work of education 
in the community, if these institutions should, in any given 
state or group of states, form a voluntary association 
whereby their work could be simplified and systemized. 



148 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Colleges quite commonly accredit the work of second- 
ary schools under certain conditions, and universities usu- 
ally accredit the work of denominational colleges of es- 
tablished grade. But such arrangements have hereto- 
fore been with a view to increase the clientele of some 
individual college or university rather than to effect any 
systematic inter-scholastic organization. But in 1900 the 
institutions represented in the Association of Colleges 
and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Mary- 
land agreed upon a plan of uniform requirements for en- 
trance to college that practically binds these institutions 
into a system. In accordance with the plan adopted by 
that Association, uniform entrance examinations are held 
simultaneously at different points by examining boards, 
whose certificates are accepted at their face value by the 
colleges concerned. A similar association has been 
formed in the South. 

Affiliated Colleges. — Several years ago a plan for 
affiliating private colleges with the state university was 
outlined before the State Educational Association of 
Missouri.^ It received but little notice there or else- 
where, but deserves careful consideration as a possible 
means of freeing the university from the necessity of so 
much undergraduate work, and of closely and econom- 
ically correlating the service of all the higher institutions 
in a given state. Briefly, the plan provides for such a vol- 
untary association between private colleges and the state 
university as shall enable the university authoritatively 
to lay out and supervise, in essentials, the courses of 
study offered by the colleges ; and it further provides for 
the recognition by the university of graduates of these 
colleges, so that a graduate would be known as a 

* Report of Nat. Commissioner of Ed. for 189 1—2, p. 753, et scq. 



INTERRELATIOX OF SCHOOL UNITS 14CJ 

" Bachelor of Arts from College of Missouri 

University." This method of combining- the educational 
institutions of a state has much to commend it to the at- 
tention of educational economists. 

(d) The Professional Training of Teachers 

State ScJiooh for Teachers 

The term " normal "' is not properly applicable as a 
distinguishing adjective, in any of its meanings, to 
schools whose aim is the training of teachers. It im- 
plies a difference that either does not exist or should not 
exist. If the training school does academic work (as it 
must and should) and the word is used to describe the 
methods of teaching and studying subject-matter, then a 
condition is implied which should not obtain. The sub- 
ject-matter of academic studies should be taught as 
" normally " in the high school or the college as in a 
teachers' training school. If the teachers' training school 
assumes academic equipment on the part of its pupils, and 
does only professional work, the term " normal " is no 
more applicable to it than to a school of law, or medi- 
cine, or theology. Space is taken here to say thus much, 
both because the word is a misnomer, and because it has, 
unfortunately, fallen into serious disrepute. 

Schools maintained for the training of teachers are 
necessary to a state system of education. The state 
should no more depend upon private training schools in 
this matter than the nation should depend wholly on vol- 
unteers in case of war. 

It is true, even in those states having the most and 
best equipped teachers' training schools, that compara- 
tively few teachers have had the training which these 
schools afford. But they serve to leaven the whole lump 



150 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

and to raise the standard of requirements for certifica- 
tion. 

If any state had the courage to say that, after a certain 
time, no one should teach in the pubHc schools who had 
not had at least one year's successful study in a state 
teachers' training school, and that the higher positions 
could be secured only by graduates of such a school, the 
best of those who desire to teach would quickly meet the 
conditions, and in sufficient numbers. 
Teachers' Institutes ^ 

Teachers' institutes have done a great deal of good 
and are destined, as they improve, to do a great deal 
more. They also, like most other educational agencies, 
afford many opportunities for waste. 

The whole subject of rural school conditions and the 
means of improving them has only recently received any 
serious and wide-spread attention from educational stu- 
dents and reformers, and the teachers' institute has suf- 
fered neglect accordingly. 

State Control of the Institute. — It is not wise for the 
state or its agents to declare specifically and in detail 
upon what topics and subtopics instruction in an institute 
shall be given, as is the case in Kentucky and Wisconsin 
for example. The State Board of Education should have 
power, however, to lay down the general lines along 
which institute work should be directed, and should have 
the discretion to make these lines broad enough not to 
hamper the work of well equipped instructors. 

In Mississippi, Wisconsin, and some other states, the 
state educational authorities may call a convention of pro- 
fessional institute instructors, for the purpose of reaching 

'Report of National Educational Association for '97: 301; Circulars of 
Bureau of Education, Washington, No. 6, 1888, and No. 2, 1889. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 151 

a common basis and method of work. Such a conven- 
tion, under proper guidance, can do great good and be 
the means of real economy. However, unless the insti- 
tutes use only " home talent," some instructors would 
not get the benefit of such a convention ; but it is never 
wise for any phase of school work to be administered 
wholly by home talent ; no state lines should be drawn 
against educational competency. 

Other states, as Illinois and Kansas, license institute 
instructors and thus, in some degree at least, protect their 
teachers against the inexpert and the ill equipped. 

Organization and Methods of the Institute. — An in- 
stitute, to be worth while, should continue through not 
less than three days ; if it can last for ten or fifteen, so 
much the better, other things being equal. 

The chief object of such a meeting is to give to the 
whole corps of teachers professional inspiration and up- 
lift. To attain this, an instructor must be had who him- 
self has inspiration and power ; the mere " method mon- 
ger " can not serve here. 

But another object is to give the teachers, particularly 
the inexperienced, specific help and direction in the or- 
ganization and management of a school and in the funda- 
mental principles of method. The failure to attain this 
object is the chief reason why so often teachers go away 
from an institute feeling resentfully that it has been hazy 
and unprofitable. The specific work in management and 
method is needed to anchor the inspiration. If the same 
instructor can give both, well and good ; if not, enough in- 
structors must be employed to accomplish these two chief 
ends of a teachers' institute. 

If an institute enrolls a large number of teachers, it 
may profitably be sectioned into at least two groups, the 



152 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

first made up of those who have had only a year's ex- 
perience, or none ; the second made up of all the others. 
All the teachers should meet together once or twice daily 
to hear the general lectures, but the teachers in each sec- 
tion should be given the technical instruction they es- 
pecially need. 

It is hardly necessary to say that, unless the institute 
continues two weeks or longer, no academic instruction 
should be attempted, except incidentally and for pur- 
poses of illustration. 

Where there is enough money, much that is cultural 
can and should be provided for the teachers during an 
institute. Popular lectures and popular music should be 
prominent features. 

The tendency of legislation is in the direction of re- 
quiring teachers to attend institutes and paying them for 
such attendance. 

Taking Notes. — Teachers would receive far more 
benefit from the institute than is commonly the case if 
they would make more use of the note book. In the 
brief time of an institute it is hardly feasible to do any 
class work, and therefore the lecture and the " round 
table " conference must be used. The value of these to 
the individual teacher lies largely in his ability to take 
notes ; but the average teacher will not take notes, as a 
rule, unless specially induced to do so. It rests with the 
county superintendent to find the sort of " inducement " 
that will prove most effective. 

The Institute and the Public. — The institute should 
be made one of the points of contact between the schools 
and the public. All general lectures upon educational 
themes should be free to the citizens of the community 
where the institute is held, and effective use should be 



INTERRELATIOX OF SCHOOL UNITS 153 

made of every opportunity thus offered to show tlie puh- 
Hc what are present educational ideals and aims and what 
is being' done to realize them. The " County Exposi- 
tion " (see p. 60), which should be a special feature of 
the annual institute, is a most valuable means of arous- 
ing public interest in the work of the schools, because it 
is objective and shows concrete results. 
Teachers' Associations 

In this country teachers' associations are, for the most 
part, voluntary and unofficial. But they constitute one 
of the best means of quickening the professional spirit 
of the teachers, a spirit of comradeship in a common work 
and a feeling of pride in doing that work well, and they 
therefore have an important function in the unification 
of a state system of schools. In addition to the advan- 
tages just named, the county association may follow the 
example of the national association and do somewhat to 
enlarge the sphere of the professional in education by well 
conducted investigations and experiments. Surely no 
one has a better opportunity for investigation of educa- 
tional problems than the country teacher ; his school- 
room is a well stocked laboratory. One of the regular 
features of the county and state meetings of educational 
associations should be concise reports of the conditions 
and results of certain experiments in management and 
method. It would be difficult to find a better way than 
this of fixing the attention of the teachers upon the cen- 
tral problems of their work. 

Too often the meeting of a teachers' association is 
given over to entertainment features and lectures from 
outsiders. But however good the music and elocution 
may be, and however excellent the talks of the imported 
educator, it must not be forgotten that the law of self- 



154 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

activity is the law of growth and apphes to a body of men 
and women as well as to an individual. The " pouring- 
in process " is but little better in a meeting of teachers 
than in a school. The conclusion is that the teachers 
themselves should take an active part in the work done 
at county, district, or state meetings. 

Association for Protection. — In Great Britain, one 
very important function of the National Union of Teach- 
ers is to protect the members by securing the enforcement 
of laws. This function has not been assumed in this coun- 
try, except in a few local instances, by any educational 
association. Yet, the protection of teachers against the 
ills they are liable to suffer through public indifference 
and the selfishness of politicians or employing boards is 
one of the important benefits to be secured by organization. 

Not only is it feasible for teachers, through their as- 
sociations, to secure protection by enforcement of laws 
already existing, but they could also successfully in- 
fluence legislative bodies to the enactment of laws favor- 
able both to teachers and to the progress of education in 
general. If a few leading teachers in each state should 
start the organization of a teachers' federation or league 
the result would appear in a greatly increased efficiency 
of school work. Wages would be better and more stable, 
certification would be more uniform and of a higher stand- 
ard, stronger men and women would therefore be drawn 
into the profession, and the weak and inefficient would be 
forced to seek other work. These statements have been 
fully verified by the work of the " Ohio Teachers' Fed- 
eration," organized in 1902. 

Libraries and Reading Circles 

In every state provision is made by law for libraries 
for the use of teachers. Every county (or township, 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 155 

where the township is the unit) shouUl maintain a teach- 
ers' Hbrar>- made up mainly of professional books and 
periodicals. This should be the case even in states where 
there are g'ood traveling libraries. 

Use of the Library. — It should be made by law a part 
of the duties of the county superintendent to take care 
of this library or have it taken care of ; and he should 
endeavor in every way to keep the reading matter in 
active circulation. Lists of new books ought to be 
posted, and published in the local papers ; teachers should 
be referred to the library for material to use in the meet- 
ings of their association ; the superintendent should call 
the attention of one or another teacher to a book or arti- 
cle which he believes would be helpful in any particular 
case. The careful, thorough use of a well selected library, 
under the sympathetic direction of a superintendent who 
knows both the books and his teachers' individual needs 
will show marked results in improved management and 
teaching throughout the county. 

Organization of Reading Circles.^ — Usually the state 
teachers' reading circle, like the associations, has a purely 
unofficial and voluntary organization. The state teach- 
ers' association elects a Board of Control, and each coun- 
ty association elects a local manager or secretary. Some 
very excellent work has been done under such voluntary 
organization ; but there is no doubt that more work, and 
more effective work, would be done if the state would 
take some authoritative part in the management of the 
reading circle. 

Although professional spirit and a desire to improve 
ought to be sufificiently strong incentives to bring every 
teacher into the reading circle work, yet it is the fact that 

^ See Report of Nat. Ed. Association of 1890, p. 325. 



156 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

a much stronger one is such credit for the completion of a 
course, as shall raise the grade or rank of the certi- 
ficate. Such credit ought to be given for completing 
a definite amount of reading, but only under the watch- 
ful direction of the state. Hence, it seems clear, the 
reading circle work ought to be under the management 
of the State Board of Education, which should select 
the books, prescribe the amount of reading, fix some sort 
of test to ascertain whether the requirements have been 
met, and issue certificates of credit that the holder may 
present to a local examining board when applying for a 
certificate. 

Too many teachers read the adopted books because it 
seems to be the thing to do, but never make any attempt, 
apparently, to bring the work of the school room into 
relation with what they have read. To correct this evil, 
a place ought to be given on the monthly association pro- 
gram for a round-table discussion of the matter read 
during the month, and members should be required to 
report on the practical use they have made of facts and 
principles gathered from their reading. Also, if the 
local supervision is close and effective, superintendents 
and inspectors will see that the teachers do apply in their 
work the best that has been learned from their reading. 

Results that are worth while can hardly be realized 
from reading circle work unless some such plan is fol- 
lowed as that outlined in the preceding paragraph. The 
reading, done largely by immature young people, will be 
desultory and aimless. 

(e) State Control of Private Schools 

There are several problems, still unsolved, or at least 
not everywhere solved alike, which touch more or less 
closely the whole question of the organization of educa- 



INTERRELATION OF SCUOOL UNITS 157 

tion as a part of the state's business. These can be but 
little more than stated here. 

Shall the state permit anyone to open a school, who 
secures a charter as for other private business? Or 
does the state owe to the youni;- citizen who seeks school- 
ing some sort of protection against educational quacks, 
as it gives protection against medical quacks? 

Control of Degree-conferring Institutions.^ — New 
York and Pennsylvania do not permit any institution to 
confer degrees unless it has an endowment or total hold- 
ings of $500,000. Efforts in the same direction have 
been made in a number of states farther west, but have 
failed, through popular protest. An academic degree has 
a certain public significance and commercial value, and 
surely the state would be quite as right in protecting this 
value as in protecting, for example, the makers of honest 
butter. 

Excellent teaching, however, can be done on less than 
$100,000 endowment. It is coming to be frankly recog- 
nized that often better work is, in fact, done in some of 
the smaller and poorer institutions than in the larger and 
richer ; witness Jena, to take a case away from home. 
Therefore the money test does not seem the best to apply 
when the state is seeking to determine what institutions 
may have legal permission to grant degrees. There is 
but one safe test, and that is the test of results. Let the 
state establish any standard of zvork it may choose, deter- 
mine in what way results shall be measured by that 
standard, charge the State Board of Education with the 
duty of carrying out the law in the case, and then grant 
the authority to confer appropriate degrees to all insti- 
tutions conforming to the established standard. 

* Report of N. E. A., 1897: 701. 



158 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Control of Elementary and Secondary Schools. — 

The discussion of state control of private schools has 
been mainly concerning degree-conferring institutions ; 
but there is greater danger in the uninspected work of 
elementary and secondary schools conducted as private 
enterprises, than in cheap degrees. 

It will doubtless be a long time before public opinion 
will cortie up to the level of a law against the opening of 
a private school by anyone who' can hire a room and find 
pupils to put in it. But the common sense of the mat- 
ter seems to be that if the state assumes, as it does, the 
right to educate, it should fix the standard of education 
and require all schools to conform thereto. The state 
can not forbid private schools, but it can justly exercise 
authority in establishing standards to which all who teach 
shall conform. 

(f) Pensions for Teachers^ 

In several of the larger cities in this country there are 
voluntary benefit associations of the teachers, which pay 
a specified sum to members who are ill a certain length 
of time, and, in some instances, pay an annuity after a 
long term of service or in case of total disability. Such 
organizations do not differ in principle from similar 
ones in any class of work. But in a few states these 
teachers' benefit associations are organized under special 
laws, and each teacher is assessed a small per cent of 
monthly salary in order to supply the benefit fund. Cali- 
fornia provides pensions for all teachers who accept the 
provisions of the state law creating a retirement fund 
by reserving one per cent of the salary, and who shall 
have become incapacitated after twenty years of service. 

^Reports of Nat. Commissioner of Ed., 1894—5, i: 1079; 189S— 6, 2: 1343; 
1898-9, 2: 1478. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 159 

To sucii a law as this, or to voluntary benefit associations, 
no objection can be offered. But to reserve any part of a 
teacher's salary without his consent, as was formerly done 
in the larger cities of Ohio, or to create a pension fund by 
state appropriations, as is suggested in several quarters, 
is a wholly different matter. 

It is an open question whether the state or anyone act- 
ing- by its authority, has a right, under any circumstances, 
to take from the teacher a part of his salary to go into 
a general teachers' benefit fund. This is compulsory 
insurance, and also involves the wider question of civil 
pensions, against which the sentiment of this country 
has so far been strong. 

B. The City System 
(a) The Board of Education^ 

Selection and Organisation 

It is the earnest desire of every friend of American 
schools that they should be free from political partisan- 
ism, nepotism, and all other forms of "pull" and 
" graft." It is worth every effort to keep boards of ed- 
ucation free from these taints. Various experiments to 
this end have been made, of which none has proved 
wholly successful. Those yielding most favorable re- 
sults indicate the following as necessary precautions in 
the selection and organization of boards of education : 
( I ) the board should be small, consisting, even in the 
largest cities, of not more than fifteen members ; (2) 
there should be some sort of qualification for member- 
ship, based upon either property or intelligence, or upon 

1 See " Report of the Educational Commission of Chicago " (1899), Chi- 
cago University Press; New York Independent 56: 416; "School Adminis- 
tration in Municipal Government," (Pollins) Macmillan Co. 



l6o ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION. 

both ; (3) the term of office should be long ; (4) the selec- 
tion of members should be by election at large, instead 
of by wards. 

Size of the Board. — A city board of education is an 
executive, rather than a representative and deliberative 
body. It should, therefore, be small so that business may 
be dispatched quickly and smoothly. The tendency in 
this country to make such boards elective and, like other 
elective bodies, representative, has resulted in making 
tliem too unwieldy, in many instances, to do rapid and 
effective work. 

Qualification of Members. — Persons who are to be 
responsible for a proper expenditure of money in so im- 
portant a matter as the schools of a community should be 
required to show some special fitness for the trust. They 
should be persons of business capacity, as evidence of 
which they should be owners of property, to a certain 
amount, in the community electing them. They should 
also be resident householders in the city whose educa- 
tional interests they are to serve. 

The Term of Office. — " Short terms and rotation in 
office " is another popular political phrase that has no 
valid application to the administration of a system of 
schools. It would be well to have a six-year term of 
office, with elections only every two years, at which a 
number equal to one third of the total number of mem- 
bers should be chosen ; and members should be eligible 
to reelection. A man or woman who renders efficient and 
unselfish service as a member of the board of education 
should be given an opportunity to render that service to 
the community so long as he or she is willing to do so. 
There could be no objection to such an arrangement, if 
the people would understand, and act upon the knowl- 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS i6l 

edge, that the schools must never be used for political 
or personal exploitation. 

Mode of Selection. — In some communities it has been 
found that appointment by the mayor, or other respon- 
sible official, gives better results than election by popular 
vote. But any argument that is valid against the popular 
election of members upon a board of education is equally 
valid against the idea of democratic government. The 
American ideal is that the people shall choose those who 
are to do the people's business. If the popular selection 
of a board of education should conform to the following- 
general plan there wotild probably be a minimum of 
evil in the results : ( i ) candidacies to be announced and 
members to be selected upon educational issues only; 

(2) the names of candidates to be proposed by some 
definite number of property owners and householders ; 

(3) the election to be at large, and not by wards; (4) 
the voting to be at a special election, if possible, so that 
" politics " may be minimized.^ 

Salaries. — The question as to whether members of a 
school board should receive salaries is not at present a 
very pressing one. The weight of custom and theory 
is against it ; and in only one city, San Francisco, has 
payment of large salaries to members of the school board 
been tried. The results there are too indecisive, ap- 
parently, to tempt other cities to a like experiment. 

Organization. — Following each election of members, 
the board should organize by putting one of the newly 
elected members in the chair, to serve there for one year. 
The experience of older members is more valuable on the 
floor than in the chair. The board should be permitted, 
under the law, to elect a salaried secretary, and, in large 

^ See Educational Review, 20: 6g, and 13: 232. 
Roark's Econ. — II 



l62 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

cities, a salaried business agent, who should be required 
to give bond. 

The fewer committees there are, the better. The fol- 
lowing are enough, namely, one on finance, as an estimat- 
ing and auditing committee ; one on buildings and sanita- 
tion ; and a third on complaints and petitions. The whole 
board should serve as a committee on appointment of 
teachers, arrangement of courses of study, and selection 
of text-books, but in these matters should have only ad- 
visory and confirmatory power, the responsibility being 
left to rest upon the superintendent. 

Functions of the Board 

The functions of a board of education should be 
mainly financial and directive. It should appoint its 
agents, confirm subordinate appointments made by these 
agents, receive bequests, and hold and dispose of prop- 
erty in its corporate name. 

Among a board's most important powers should be 
(i) levying a school tax; (2) exercise of the right of 
eminent domain in the acquirement of school sites ; 
(3) defining in a general way the regulations of the 
schools, the duties and responsibilities of school officials, 
and the content of the course of study. 

Levying Tax. — In some instances a school board has 
the right to levy the school tax direct, without regard to 
the city council. In others, the board can hand in to the 
council an estimate of the sum necessary to sustain the 
schools for a year, and, if this sum does not exceed that 
which can be raised from a certain percentage of tax 
upon the property owners, the latter body is required by 
law to allow the estimate. This arrangement is usu- 
ally found to be more satisfactory than the first, as it 
eliminates conflicts of authoritv. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 163 

Eminent Domain. — One of the most important recom- 
mendations of the Chicago Educational Commission was 
that a citv school board should have the right of eminent 
domain, whereby to acquire land upon which to erect 
school buildings. This is especially desirable in the 
larger cities where population is congested, and real es- 
tate owners are loath to sell. The necessity for giv- 
ing to a school board the power to purchase land by 
condemnation proceedings becomes more and more evi- 
dent as it is more clearly realized how much location afid 
floor space have to do with the health, comfort, and good 
work of the pupils. 

Regulations. — The regulations under which any busi- 
ness is administered should be as few and as simple as 
possible. In the case of a system of schools the only 
rules needed are such as define in the broadest terms the 
responsibilities of the superintendent and his corps, the 
duties of the janitors, and the adjustment of such special 
matters as may be dependent upon local conditions. The 
policy of the board should be to outline broadly the work 
of the employes, and then to allow them great freedom in 
attaining the results for which they are held responsible. 

The Courses of Study and Text-books. — The rela- 
tions of the school board to the courses of study should 
be of the most general character. The board shoulcl, 
because of lack of expert knowledge, do no more than 
determine, in consultation with the superintendent, the 
general subjects to be taught in the schools. To the super- 
intendent and his corps should be left the details of ar- 
rangement and the methods of teaching. 

The same attitude should be taken by the board with 
reference to text-books. The board's duty is simply to 
protect the users of the books against too frequent 



164 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

changes, and against too high prices. Beyond this, the 
selection of books should be left to those who will teach 
from them. 

(b) The Superintendent 

Qualifications. — The prime requisites which a school 
board should find in the person it proposes to elect to 
the superintendency are successful experience in graded 
school work, executive power, eminent scholarship, broad 
culture, and proved character. 

A superintendent should have at least a college educa- 
tion, and should be endowed with forceful and magnetic 
personality. 

Term of Office. — It is well to elect the superintendent 
for one probationary year, and, if his work is good, to 
reelect him for a second trial year. If his service im- 
proves during the second year, he should then be elected 
for an indefinite term, under a contract terminable on the 
part of the board only upon proved charges of unfitness. 

Privileges and Responsibilities. — The superintendent 
should be privileged to select his principals and teachers, 
subject to confirmation by the board. It would not be 
wise to place the selection of the teaching corps wholly 
in the superintendent's hands, and it is even more un- 
W'ise to have the appointment of teachers entirely under 
the control of the board. A safe balance between the 
two dangers may be formed by giving to the superin- 
tendent the power of nomination of teachers, and to the 
board the power of confirming nominations. 

To the superintendent also, as an educational expert, 
should be left the details of the course of study, the as- 
signment of work to individual teachers, and the methods 
of instruction. The superintendent should be rigorously 



INTBRRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS 165 

held responsible for the professional efficiency of the 
schools, and it is just to place responsibility only where 
there is commensurate freedom of action. 

The selection of the books and apparatus by which the 
teachers are to carry out the course of study should be 
left to the superintendent and his corps of principals. 

The fact should be carefully borne in mind and con- 
stantly carried into practice, that the board's concern is 
with the business side of school affairs, and the super- 
intendent's concern is with the successful working of the 
schools as educational agencies. He should be able to 
infuse vitality and coherence into the system as a whole, 
and be able to inspire his teaching corps with an en- 
thusiastic willingness to work in the execution of his 
large plans. 

(c) The Principals 

The qualifications of a principal should be the same in 
kind as those of the superintendent, namely, sound schol- 
arship, the training of experience, and a positive and 
attractive personality. 

The place of principal should be made as secure as that 
of superintendent, the same precautions having been 
taken to test fitness. 

By the same reasoning as in the case of the superin- 
tendent it seems clear that the principal should be con- 
sulted in the selection of the teachers for the school of 
which he has charge. The superintendent should pay 
close heed to the recommendations of the principal as to 
the fitness and unfitness of teachers. 

Should Appoint Janitors. — It has been suggested, and 
with excellent reason, that with the principal should be 
left the selection of the janitor, subject only to confirma- 
tion by the board of education. Such an arrangement 



l66 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

would still further lessen the temptation and opportunity 
of the board to use the appointing power for political or 
personal ends. The janitor is so large a factor in the 
comfort and health of a school, in the preservation of 
order and decency, and in the smooth running of school 
affairs, that it is of the utmost importance to secure such 
harmony between him and the principal and such willing- 
ness of service, as can be. obtained only by having the 
principal exercise both immediate and final authority over 
him. 

Constitute an Educational Council. — The principals, 
in all but the largest cities, where district superintend- 
ents are needed, should constitute the superintendent's 
professional council. Acting with him they should in- 
itiate and carry out such plans as will best economize 
time, teaching force, and pupil energy. 

Although the principals have to deal more with de- 
tails than the superintendent does, yet they also should 
leave to the teachers the largest possible measure of in- 
dividual liberty. After principles have been laid down 
and the ends to be reached have been defined with needed 
particularity, the teachers should, for the most part, be 
allowed to apply these principles and attain these ends 
in their own way. Originality of work not only should 
be allowed but should be sympathetically encouraged.^ 

(d) The Teachers 

The difficulty which, more than any other, blocks the 
efficiency of the public schools, is that the people do not 
realize the need of teachers who can teach. And the 
reason for this is found in the fact that there is not and 

^ Refer to Report of National Educational Association, 1901: 280, et seq., 
and to the Superintendents' Round Tables in other issues of the Report; 
Also to the files of the American School Board Journal, Milwaukee. 



INTERRELATJON OF SCHOOL UNITS 167 

can not be any accurate measure of results of teachinp^ 
and in the further fact that these results may so easily 
be vitiated, or improved, by agencies and inHuences 
wholly outside the teacher's control. In consequence, 
people have fallen into thinking that anyone who can 
pass an examination can be a teacher, and so, since all 
certificated persons are alike as to teaching" ability, why 
not let the needy girl, the struggling youth, the poor 
widow, the superannuated clergyman, or the sons and 
daughters of the local politicians have the places and 
draw the pay? \\'hy not carefully keep the places for 
"home talent?" 

To help to a better condition of school affairs than 
that to which this state of the popular mind always leads, 
the law should provide (i) for the certification of teach- 
ers by expert examiners wholly disconnected with the 
schools; (2) for their appointment by the superintend- 
ent; (3) for permanent tenure of office; (4) for suffi- 
cient pay, and a uniform scale of salaries based upon 
skill and length of service. 

Certification. — An examining board should be ap- 
pointed by the board of education, composed of persons 
who are expert educators, but who have no connection 
with the schools whose teachers they shall examine. To 
secure such a board non-residents may have to be ap- 
pointed, but this would, doubtless, be another advantage 
of the plan. 

It should always be understood that the applicants for 
certificates may come from any place, and that health, 
age, scholarship, character, and skill will be the only 
qualifications considered. 

This examining board, not the board of education, 
should have authority to accept diplomas or certificates 



l68 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

from other sources in lieu of the results of its own 
examinations. 

Appointment. — As said in a previous paragraph, the 
teachers should receive their appointment from the super- 
intendent, who will, if he is wise, take counsel of his prin- 
cipals and of others who can help him make good selec- 
tions. His interest in making good appointments is both 
professional and personal, and is much deeper than that 
of the school board could be. His ability to judge of an 
applicant's fitness for appointment, although by no means 
infallible, is far superior to that of the board. 

As said above, however, a balance should be main- 
tained by leaving in the hands of the board the privilege 
of confirming or rejecting the superintendent's appoint- 
ments.^ 

Tenure of OfBce. — The public school teacher who does 
good work should be secure in her position. After one 
or two years of probation under close supervision, if 
the result of the trial is satisfactory, the teacher's tenure 
of i!)lace should be made permanent ; which means, at 
least, that she should not be subjected to a yearly election. 

Scale of Pay. — To-day sociologists are urging the 
claim of the hand laborer to a wage not based upon mere 
supply and demand in the labor market, but upon the 
laborer's needs and rights as a man. Such a claim could 
be far more strongly urged in the case of the teacher, who 
deals with the things of the spirit, and who must spend 
money constantly upon self-enrichment and the means 
of intellectual and cultural growth, in order to give good 
service to the state. The teacher must receive not only 

1 Every api»licant should be required to present a physician's certificate of 
physical fitness. 



INTERRELATION OF SCHOOL UNITS. 169 

" a living wage " but one that may also buy food for the 
soul. 

As in other occupations, so in teaching, the pay should 
be proportioned to skill, capacity, and length of service. 
Under such an arrangement, a successful primary 
teacher might receive better pay than a high school prin- 
cipal. 

Some day the fact will be realized by the real employer, 
the public, that the best teachers that can be secured 
should be placed in charge of the lower grades and paid 
handsomely for laying sound and safe foundations. 

Another reason for more liberality, which is the truest 
economy, in the payment of teachers, is found in the 
rapidly growing demand for men teachers in the grades, 
and, under the present organization of society at least, 
more money must be paid in order to secure men teach- 
ers. 

The Teacher's Liberty. — The need of allowing to 
principals and teachers great liberty in the carrying out 
of general plans has already been more than once sug- 
gested. It can not be too often affirmed. Those who 
do the actual work of teaching should be allowed the 
greatest possible freedom for the play of personality, the 
strongest force with which a teacher can be endowed, and 
should be held accountable for results. There can be no 
sound objection to allowing teachers also the liberty of 
suggestion and criticism. The same good results may 
be expected from the allowance of such liberty in a school 
system as in factories, and in the latter the results have 
always been good, when the employes have been invited 
to make suggestions looking to the increased efificiency 
of the plant. 

The grade teacher sees things from a view point which 



170 



ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 



is in the nature of things more intimate than that of 
either principal or superintendent. She is, therefore, in- 
a position to give intelHgent and sympathetic criticism 
of the inner working of the schools, and should be in- 
vited to do so candidly. 

Such criticism and suggestion may sometimes be of- 
fered in the general teachers' meetings, or to the prin- 
cipal or the superintendent as opportunity is given. But, 
to secure unreserved frankness, written and unsigned 
criticisms should be permitted. If the right spirit is 
shown in the matter by the principal and the superintend- 
ent, there need be no fear whatever of anonymous malice 
or scandal mongering. 

(e) School Visitors 

One of the best recommendations made by the Chicago 
Educational Commission was that the mayor of the city 
should appoint a committee, or committees, of citizens 
who are in no way connected with the schools, and whose 
business it should be to visit and carefully to inspect the 
schools, reporting results to the board of education.^ 
Such a committee, made up of intelligent and responsible 
citizens, examining the material equipment and work of 
the schools, judging of these from a standpoint outside 
of the school system, and reporting its observations and 
conclusions directly to the school board, would be of the 
highest service to public education in any city. The 
plan of a committee of this kind has been proposed for 
Boston also, and is already effective in New York and 
in Atlanta. In the latter city the committee of visitors 
is made up wholly of women. 

(f) The City Teachers' Training School 

The pressing need of a sufficient supply of trained 

' See Report of Chicago Educational Commission, p. 167. 



THE CURRICULUM \yi 

teachers in the larger cities has led to the establishment 
of the teachers' training school as an integral part of the 
city school system. The wisdom of this is open to ques- 
tion. Even granting that the training given in these 
schools is all that could be desiretl, still they must tend 
to strengthen the general demand that " home talent " 
be given preference when teachers are to be employed ; 
and they tend, further, to an educational " in-and-in 
breeding " that is very undesirable. The city's schools, 
like its other enterprises, public and private, should draw 
to their service the best intelligence and skill from every 
quarter, and nothing should be permitted to stand in the 
way of getting the best. 

The teachers' training school will doubtless, for sev- 
eral reasons, continue to be a part of the school system 
in every large city, but its disadvantages should not be 
lost sight of, and it should be used rather to maintain a 
certain standard of fitness than merely as a source of 
supply. It should be made to feel the sharp competition 
of state teachers' training schools, and college depart- 
ments of education. 

(2) THE CURRICULUM 

A few years ago courses of study were administered 
without any particular question about them. The cur- 
riculum for each kind of school, elementary, secondary, 
and higher, was single and definite. Now, even the ele- 
mentary schools are coming to vie with one another in 
variety of studies and diversity of courses. The curricu- 
lum is the one most discussed thing in school economy 
to-day. 

It will facilitate the treatment of the subject if some 
basic principles can be formulated and adhered to. These 
principles should be valid for all phases and modifications 



172 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

of formal education, private or public, elementary, sec- 
ondary, and higher. 

A. Making the Curriculum 
(a) Principles Fundamental to the Curriculum 

Definitions Involved. — Education has been classed as 
formal and informal; and the formal phases of it as for- 
mative and reformative. The question here is v^ith re- 
gard to formative education ; but it may be said at this 
point that modern reformative educational influences are 
more and more closely following the methods of forma- 
tive education. 

Formal education is a process tending continually 
tow^ard the realization of its highest aim — the happiness 
of the individual in the betterment of the social zvhole} 

The curriculum and its administration are the chief 
factors in this process. 

Too Much Individualism. — Plainly the demand so in- 
sistently made up to times quite recent, that teaching 
shall be individual, has been misinterpreted and the ef- 
forts made to meet it may easily do harm. The demand 
originated in a realization of the inadequacy of mass 
teaching, handling children in large groups and all alike, 
and so failing to recognize and reach the personality of 
each. But the matter of individuality was so empha- 
sized that the sociological ends of education were lost 
sight of, and one result has been individualism gone to 
seed and ripening as selfishness. Only psychologically 
is the curriculum for the individual; sociologically it 

* N. Y. Teachers' Monograph, Oct. 1901, pp. i, no, 120, et seq.; 
Fouillee's "Education from a National Standpoint"; LeConte's "Evolution 
and Education," Ed. Rev. 10: 130, et seq.; Guyau's "Education and Hered- 
ity," Contemporary Science Series; Young's " Isolation in the School," 
University of Chicago Press; Dewey's " The School and Society," University 
of Chicago Press. 



THE CURRICULUM 1 73 

should be altruistic and civic. The course of study must 
reveal to the pupil the material and social world in which 
he lives, and his own relation to it, making- clear his 
duties and privileges and holding up before him service 
as his highest and most permanent ideal. It is now de- 
manded that schools shall not merely give information, 
but shall make society. Upon precisely this idea of the 
socialhation of the individual hinges one of the latest 
phases of educational discussion. 

The Curriculum both Sociological and Psycholog- 
ical. — So much being true, the curriculum must embody 
the things that will best develop the individual as such, 
and also fit him for his functions as a social factor. This 
is to say that the curriculum must be planned both psy- 
chologically and sociologically. 

In the laws of social growth and in the modes of the 
individual's contact with society, as well as in psychology, 
must be sought guidance as to what shall constitute the 
curriculum ; in the laws of physical and mental growth 
and in the modes of the mind's activities must be sought 
the ways of fitting the curriculum to the individual. 

Justification of Public Education. — Before it is de- 
termined what shall be the subject-matter of the course 
of study the c[uestion must be answered, as far as public 
education is concerned, " What justifies education at pub- 
lic expense, what is the excuse for levying this heavy 
tribute upon the public purse ? " 

There can be but one answer to this, and that is, " The 
state has no right to undertake the work of universal 
education except as a measure of protection, perpetua- 
tion, and improvement to the state ; the product of public 
education must be good citizenship." If this answer is 
true, it is true for all grades of schools and applies with 



174 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

equal force to the public kindergarten and to the state 
university. 

The Unity of Educational Processes. — To work in 
conformity with the principle here laid down will be to 
bring into harmony and coherence with one another, about 
a common core of organization, the curriculums of the 
several schools in a state system. And if the state is to 
supervise private schools, they also will have to adopt 
the same principle as vital to the right doing of their 
work. Dewey rightly says,^ that the problem of the 
curriculum is first intellectual and then practical, and that 
" intellectually what is needed is a philosophy of organ- 
ization, a view of the organic unity of the educative 
process and educative material, and of the place occupied 
in this whole by each of its parts." To hold steadfastly 
to this idea of the " organic unity of educative process 
and educative material," the oneness of the curriculum 
through school and college, is to be saved from the con- 
fusion now found in the relations of the elementary 
school to the high school and of the high school to the 
college. Neither will be thought of as solely preparatory 
to or dependent upon the others, but each will be rightly 
related to the other through the relation of all to the 
common purposes of education. If each faces the social 
highway along which its students must travel, then each 
will be rightly oriented to the others. 

On this subject of the oneness of " educational con- 
struction " President Eliot has said -.^ "... I wish 
to affirm and illustrate the proposition that the chief prin- 
ciples and objects of educational reform are quite the 
same from beginning to end of that long course of edu- 

^ Educational Review, 22: 47. 
^Educational Review, 8: 210. 



THE CURRICCLUM 175 

cation which extends from the fifth or sixth to the twenty- 
fifth or twenty-sixth year of hfe." 

What is Good Citizenship? — Before making up a 
curricuhmi which shall conform to the ret[uirement just 
given, it is necessary to determine what are the elements 
of good citizenship. 

One mark of a good citizen is that he renders to the 
coniiniDiity a just equivalent for all he receives from it. 
He must not do less ; he may do more. He has the ca- 
pacity for productive labor of muscle or mind, and suffi- 
ciently strong motives to impel him to use it. No matter 
how good a man may be as an individual, he is not a good 
citizen unless he is able to make an honest living for him- 
self and for those dependent upon him. He is neither 
a good man nor a good citizen if, having capacity, he is 
too lazy or too dishonest to apply it rightly, and under- 
takes, whether as a beggar, a thief, or an idle millionaire, 
to get a living, and more, from the community without 
giving equivalent service. 

But a man may come up to the full measure here indi- 
cated, and still fall short of the best citizenship. Another 
mark of a good citizen is that he shall gladly do some- 
z^'hat for the community zvithout expectation or desire for 
personal return; there must be a willingness to spend self 
in order to add to the sum total of help and happiness for 
humanity. 

x^ll that has been said in the attempt to define the good 
citizen applies to the w^oman as well as to the man. A 
woman's service to the public may be the same as a man's, 
or it may be diiTerent ; her highest service unquestionably 
is different. But if the community is richer, materially 
or spiritually, because she lives in it, then the woman is 
a good citizen, otherwise not. 



176 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

The Substance of the Curriculum. — In the lig^ht of 
the conclusions so far drawn, the curriculum of the public 
schools must contain wherewith (i) to cultivate in the 
young citizen a capacity to do something the world needs 
done, and (2) to stir his ambition and strengthen his will 
to do it. Whatever else the curriculum contains, it must 
provide for equipping those upon whom it is wrought 
out with the ability to zvork intelligently and skillfully, 
and the teaching must fill them with a sense of their pro- 
found obligation to work — to work not merely with 
the purpose to make a living, but to serve the social 
■whole. 

The content of the curriculum, that is to say, its sub- 
stance, must provide knowledge of physical and social 
environment, and the means of cultivating the capacity 
and purpose of the pupil both to adapt himself to this 
environment and, especially, to adapt this environment to 
his own higher life, and so to the life of his fellows.^ 

The Sociological Aspect of the Curriculum. 

The subjects for which place must be made in the 
curriculum in obedience to societary demands are (i) 
science, (2) manumental training, (3) arithmetic, (4) 
history, including geography and civics, (5) language 
and literature, (6) physical culture. These are the sub- 
jects which the state has a right to put into the curricu- 
lum of its schools for purposes of utility and self-pro- 
tection. 

Science. — One phase of man's progress in civilization 
is measured by his ability to discover and use the facts 
and laws of nature. In proportion as he reduces all 
phenomena of the inorganic and the organic worlds to 

'See "Education as Adjustment," O'Shea; "The Psychic Factors of 
Civilization," Ward; Eliot's " Educational Reform," pp. 151, 303; Hanus's 
" Educational Aims and Educational Values," pp. i, 43. 



THE CURRICULU^f 1 77 

order and law , he emerges from the darkness and paral\- 
sis of superstition. The men who have gained the keen- 
est insight into the proeesses of nature and have most 
succeeded in rechicing these to formulas have done the 
highest material and, in many cases, also the highest 
spiritual service to mankind. 

The child, therefore, as a factor of constantly increas- 
ing value in the social whole, must be made acquainted 
with his material environment and its basic laws 

Two good results to the social whole, to mention no 
more, of the right use of science in the school curricu- 
lum, especially in the elementary and secondary schools, 
are (i) the increased contentment of the country dweller 
to remain in his environment, using and enjoying it; and 
(2) the introduction of a centrifugal force into congested 
urban centers, by showing people how farm and garden 
and forest may be made to pay in both money and health. 

Manumental Training. — The term " manumental " is 
used in order to emphasize the fact that the real function 
of the manual training furnished by other than special 
trade schools must be primarily educative. The purpose 
is not merely to train the hand to work skillfully, impor- 
tant as that is, but to reach the mind through the training 
of the hand as an instrument of acquisition and of ex- 
pression. 

The term is used here also with a wider meaning than 
has attached to " manual." Under it is included all 
forms of school work with materials of any kind, kinder- 
garten occupations, drawing, modeling, sewing, and cook- 
ing, work in wood and metal and school gardening. 
" Manumental training " means all school employments 
that typically represent or reproduce the material con- 
structive and productive activities of society. 

Roark's Econ. — 12 



178 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

The plainest fact upon which a sociological argument 
for manumental training in the curriculum can be rested 
is that a very large percentage of the world's work must 
always be done directly or indirectly with hands, and the 
better trained the hands are the better will the work be. 
The professions enroll only about ten per cent of those 
who are engaged in gainful occupations, and of the re- 
mainder but five per cent have had any school training 
whereby they were specially fitted for the particular work 
they are trying to do. Even of the ten per cent of pro- 
fessional workers, there are many, surgeons, dentists, 
scientists, painters, and sculptors, who need for their 
work special skill of hand. Only within very recent 
years have the glaring injustice and the social waste of 
making more provision in the public schools for the five 
per cent than for the ninety-five begun to be recognized. 

If, as was said above, an essential element of good citi- 
zenship is the ability to make an honest living, and most 
honest livings are made with the hands, then society has 
a right to demand that the training of hands shall be a 
function of the public school. Then, too, the great indus- 
tries are justified in demanding as a social right that the 
schools shall give the alphabet of the crafts and arts, 
even as they have so long given the alphabet of the pro- 
fessions. 

When it is remembered that most of the manumental 
training afforded by public schools in this country to-day 
is confined to the high schools, and that only about five 
per cent of the school population ever get into the high 
schools at all, the necessity at once becomes evident that 
this form of training must have a place in the elementary 
schools. 

Another and higher value of manumental training in 



THE CURRICULUM 179 

the public schools is its democratizing;; influence. Instead 
of making- class or caste differences more distinct and 
permanent, as was once argued by its opponents, it serves 
to bring the so-called superior social class into intelligent 
sympathy with the hand worker, and gives to the hum- 
blest pupil the self-respect and the self-confidence that 
invariably mark him who can do something skillfully. 
The man in broadcloth can not seem so far removed, 
socially, from the man in overalls if as boys the two 
worked at the same bench and with the same tools. No 
man who has worked skillfully with his own hands can 
ever look down upon the hand craftsman ; the man who 
has had only mental training frequently does. 

As one reads the discussions of manual training as 
reported in the various educational meetings throughout 
this country, he must be impressed by the unanimity 
with which the subject is handled as a sort of inducement 
for keeping boys longer in school. In these discussions 
the girls, their continuing in school, their share in social 
service, their adaptation to present and future environ- 
ment, seem to be considered but slightly, or wholly ig- 
nored. Happily, the practice is better than the preaching, 
in many instances, and not a few elementary schools pro- 
vide for instruction and practice in sewing, cooking, and 
other forms of domestic arts, while many higher institu- 
tions are at last practically recognizing their duty by 
offering sound courses in both the domestic sciences and 
the domestic arts. 

General Walker has said with characteristic vigor, 
" America is suffering from two great curses, indigestion 
and alcoholism, both due to . . .the inability of the 
women in the middle and lower classes to prepare whole- 
some and nourishing food." 



l8o ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

What particular type of constructive activity shall re- 
ceive most attention in any given locality or section must 
depend upon the circumstances environing the school. 
In agricultural communities the school must help to show 
the intelligent, scientific side of farming ; in industrial 
regions the emphasis may be placed upon tool work ; 
where there are mines, attention should be paid to miner- 
alogy and the elements of mining engineering. 

Arithmetic. — Arithmetic, the art of measuring and 
comparing quantities, is fundamental in all societary oc- 
cupations, and only in its applications to these has it any 
particular value in the curriculum. Both the public and 
schoolmen are slow to recognize this fact, and so to this 
day much that is archaic and worse than useless persists 
in the arithmetic of the schools ; as often taught it de- 
serves the name of the " Moloch of the curriculum." 

History, including Geography and Civics. — Every 
one in an American community has the privilege, and in 
this case duty is commensurate with privilege, of aiding 
in directing the political activities and in determining 
the influence of the social institutions of town, state, and 
nation. To do these things wisely, with economy of 
effort and the avoidance of costly experiment, a knowl- 
edge of what has been attempted in other times and places 
is necessary. A proper appreciation of the civic errors 
of the past, an appreciation becoming dynamic in motive 
and action, would prevent the continual municipal mis- 
rule so characteristic of large American cities. It is 
quite probable that had the generation which came to 
manhood and womanhood in the United States in the 
'50's been well grounded in Greek history and its political 
lessons, the Civil War might have been averted. A thor- 
ough study of four centuries of Rome might have pre- 



THE CURRICl'LUM l8l 

vented the French Revokition. The civilized nations of 
the world, in making- some recent history, have set les- 
sons the learning; of which will do away with war alto- 
gether. 

But at the very core of each great world movement 
there is a personality ; biography is the soul of history. To 
put before the young the life histories of men and w^omen 
who, in heroic endeavor, self-sacrifice, and utter devotion 
to the public good in war, in political service, in pure re- 
ligion, in medical research, in social betterment, have 
wrought mightily for their fellow^s and for posterity, is 
to provide for the still higher and more complete social- 
ization of human energy, for that exalted altruism which 
is to be the distinctive mark of the twentieth century. 

Along with the history, if it is to have body and sub- 
stance, must go geography. But to make history sub- 
stantial by giving to each event its local habitation is only 
one use of geography, or, rather, is the use of but one 
kind of geography. Physiography and commercial geog- 
raphy are also societary subjects, because a knowledge 
of them is needed by those who are to take an active 
part in either the production or distribution of the world's 
necessaries and luxuries, and is equally needed by those 
whose business it may be to make laws for the control of 
production and distribution. 

Civics. — The theory and practice of citizenship is 
applied history, and as a subject in the curriculum should 
be so presented as to furnish the young citizen both with 
the knowledge of his duties and how to discharge them 
rightly, and wuth a noble inspiration to make his work in 
the community contribute richly to its higher life. 

Language and Literature. — Good work in all subjects 
depends, of course, upon some knowledge of language. 



l82 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

With respect to their social value language and literature 
are not to be studied so much for their direct as for their 
indirect importance. There is nothing politically anti- 
septic about the alphabet ; the fourth reader is no anti- 
dote for social poisons. Only lately have we begun 
to recover from the idea that the three R's by some inher- 
ent virtue hold healing for political, social, and moral ills. 

Letters are but the vehicle of the inspiration contained 
in literature ; except as reading leads to high ideals and 
conduct conformed to them, it is socially worthless or 
harmful. 

Physical Training. — A nation rightly demands that 
its soldiers shall come up to a certain measure of physical 
fitness. A community, town, state, or nation has an equal 
right to demand that all its citizens be given such train- 
ing as to equip them with power to resist disease and suc- 
cessfully to stand the expenditure of the physical energy 
necessary to discharge fully all their duties as citizens. 
If communities could but realize the wisdom of spending 
as much, proportionally, in producing a physically sound 
and competent citizenry as in taking care of defective 
classes and individuals, there would soon be much less 
need than now appears for almshouses and asylums for 
the insane and the imbecile. At this point sound peda- 
gogy again makes demands upon sociology and political 
economy, and urges that, through the legal suppression 
of all forms of objective temptation to vice, the schools 
be given a fair chance to do their perfect work upon the 
young, giving them sound and wholesome bodies as well 
as clean minds. 

The Psychological Aspect of the Curriculum. 

As said earlier, the arrangement of the subject-matter 
of the curriculum must be psychological, following the 



THE CURRICL'LUM 183 

natural order in which the growing mind's activities man- 
ifest themselves, and so adjusted to these activities as to 
reenforce them and bring tliem to their best expression. 
The history and literature of education afford few exam- 
ples of trustworthy inductive experimentation in basing 
educational processes upon psycholog}-, and until much 
inductive experimentation is done these processes must 
be haphazard and fall short of full fruitfulness. 

Three Operations Known. — It is clear enough, how- 
ever, that at the age wdien the child enters school the mind 
functions in its three operations of acquisition, assimila- 
fioji. and expression} Facts and experiences must be 
acquired, must come into consciousness, before they can 
arouse feeling and thought, and, if expression is anything 
more than the automatic play of sensation and motor 
responses, feeling and thinking must precede expression, 
or, as Holbrook better calls it, " self-externalization." 

The conclusion from this is that the acquisitive powers, 
the senses and memory, should first be given active and 
gratifying employment through objective work; the in- 
herent assimilative powers, already highly active, should 
be directed by deft questions or suggestions (oral and 
objective), and the irrepressible tendency to express 
by speech and motor activity should be given constant 
encouragement and freedom of opportunity. Any given 
exercise in school should be so planned as to evoke all 
these activities, though not necessarily all in equal de- 
gree. 

There should be at every stage of the pupil's progress 
through school life acquisitional, assimilational, and ex- 
pressional exercises and studies provided in the curricu- 
lum. 

^ Roark's "Psychology in Education," pp. 155-264. 



i84 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

But the powers of acquisition, assimilation, and expres- 
sion do not all develop in even measure at the same time. 
In the early days the acquisitive powers are most active ; 
in later youth and early middle life the assimilative lead, 
although the acquisitive are still growing ; and later still 
the expressive powers, if development has been normal, 
reach a maximum. 

The application of this to the arrangement of the cur- 
riculum demands that in the elementary schools the em- 
phasis be placed relatively upon acquisition of funda- 
mental facts ; in the secondary schools upon assimilational 
activity ; and in the higher institutions upon expressional 
activity. 

That is to say, in the elementary school the aim should 
be to provide the pupils with the alphabets of the differ- 
ent departments of human knowing, being, and doing, 
to lay broad and deep ground plans in the acquisition of 
the fundamentals of knowledge, in the formation of the 
moral habits, and in the beginnings of that skillful adjust- 
ment of word and deed to thought and feeling which 
shall mark the competent and cultured man and woman. 
In the high school and college, doing their work in the 
adolescent and early adult periods, the aim should be so 
to balance freedom for the student's individual initiative 
with the teacher's directive and stimulating influence as 
to secure the most effective activity of the powers of inde- 
pendent thinking. The result of the work of the second- 
ary school should be that the student " finds himself " 
and can stand alone, with power to use his equipment. 

The distinctive function of the university should be 
specialization, putting the edge of skill upon the blade of 
power, fitting the man or woman to do easily and econom- 
icallv some one thing thoroughly well. 



THE CURRICLIMM. 1 85 

Psychological and Social Values. — In skillful hands 
almost any subject can be niailo io _\ickl excellent results 
of a purely psychological value ; but the facts upon 
which the acquisitive powers are exercised may be of no 
value, the combinations and relations which call forth 
assimilative activity may have no application to the needs 
of either the individual or society, and the forms of ex- 
pression may be such as to unfit the individual for react- 
ing ujxin his environment or for adapting it to his needs. 
The absurdities of the scholasticism of the middle ages 
bear abundant testimony to the truth of these statements. 

There are subjects of deep human interest that are 
suffused with the beauty and glory of what the race has 
been and is, what it has accomplished and what it is ac- 
complishing now ; and these subjects have a right to a 
place in the curriculum for both sociological and psycho- 
logical reasons. Of these, literature in its broad mean- 
ing, the history of other peoples, and the arts of form and 
music rank first in importance. 

There are still other subjects which are more remotely 
social and more directly psychological than those just 
named. These may be grouped under the wide term 
philosophy, and their chief value lies in liberalizing, that 
is, freeing, the mind, and in making of it a more efficient 
instrument of work. In so far as this latter aim is 
reached, philosophy too becomes a distinctly social subject. 

All these subjects, in their various forms, are usually 
called the " culture studies." It is as right that they 
should have places in the course of study, and largely for 
the same reasons, as that the schoolhouse should have 
beauty of architectural finish, or that pictures should hang 
on the walls of the schoolroom. Thev are psycholog- 
ically valuable because they give power and poise, culti- 



l86 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

vate the emotions, and train the reason. They are socially 
valuable because they redeem society from crass utilita- 
rianism and materialism. 

Guyau, in " Heredity and Education," says, "... 
whatever is really conformable to the highest good of in- 
dividual life (moral and physical) is from that very fact 
useful to the whole race." If this is true at all, it is true 
because man is a social being, and what is not good for 
society is not good for him as a part of society. 

But it is safer to state Guyau's proposition conversely. 
Rather should it be said that whatever is found to be a 
fit subject to meet societary demands upon the curriculum 
can be so handled as to meet, in the main, psychological 
demands. 

There follows a brief summary of the working con- 
clusions reached upon this point : 

Judged from the psychic and socio-psychic standpoints 
any subject, to deserve a place in the curriculum, must 
show one or more of three values, utilitarian, disciplinary, 
and cultural. It must be directly useful to the individ- 
ual and to society, or it must have special power to 
strengthen and train some capacity or capacities of the 
mind, or it must prove itself a means through which may 
be acquired that indefinable but very real something called 
culture. 

Science Has All Three Values. — Science, put first on 
a preceding page in the list of subjects having social sig- 
nificance, has all the values named above. The utility of 
science was the basis of its earliest claim to recognition 
and rank in the curriculum. But its advocates were im- 
mediately put upon the defensive by the counter conten- 
tion that science is not disciplinary and especially is not 
cultural. It is not intended to reopen here the old quarrel 



THE CURRICULUM 187 

between the elassies and tlie seienees. The seiences are 
in the eurriculuni permanently, l)ut tlie resnlts have been 
somewhat disappointing- to both parties to the contro- 
versy. The utiHty of science has been demonstrated ; its 
disciplinary power is becoming more evident daily, as we 
learn better how to teach it ; only in its cultural quality 
does it seem to fall short of the highest claims made for it. 
But that it has this quality is shown by the addresses and 
writings of Huxley, for example, whose every utterance 
was marked by the lucidity, sincerity, poise, and polish 
that are the most important attributes of culture. Un- 
fortunately, too many scientists and teachers of science 
seem indilterent to the culture value of science, or are 
even proud of their inability to bring it out in their teach- 
ing. When science shall have been in the curriculum for 
as long a time as the classics occupied first place there, 
and its methodology shall have been as carefully worked 
out, its worth as an instrument of liberal education will 
be manifest. 

The case for the culture side of science is well stated 
by the editor of one of the chief literary magazines when 
he says : " . . . there are no other things [than 
science] of so far-reaching suggestiveness, no other 
things of such imaginative use in relation to our thought 
concerning questions of the greatest moment and inter- 
est." 

Manumental Training. — Twenty years ago the con- 
tention over manual training was nearly as fierce as that 
over the sciences. Now, as in the case of scientific study, 
the utilitarian and disciplinary values of manual training 
are known of all men ; its ethical and cultural values 
are becoming evident.^ 

^ One of the strongest presentations yet made of the psychological value 



i88 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Those wlio derided the idea of a " carpenter shop in 
the school "* for the most part granted the bre^d and but- 
ter utihty of manual training, but could see in it no gen- 
uinely educative value. It has, however, been shown that 
in addition to its service as a training in exactness it also 
in a marked degree increases general power and efficiency 
through its development of sensory and motor areas in 
the brain which would otherwise not be made to function.' 
Furthermore, the varied exercises of manumental train- 
ing afTord outlet for the motor activities, which are highly 
important forms of expression and which under prevail- 
ing school usages are suppressed instead of being directed 
and trained. 

Culture Value of Manumental Training. — Esthetic 
appreciation and aesthetic skill are among the marks of 
culture, and these manumental training, used as it can be 
and should be, will always give. The art side of manual 
work is a side constantly needing emphasis. Construc- 
tive work in the school should always strive to express 
not only utility but beauty as w^ell.- It is further claimed 
by those who have tested the matter, that manumental 
training has a distinct and positive moral value. •'• 

Arithmetic. — What psychological value arithmetic has 
is in its disciplinary effects. These are much less than 
has long been supposed, as President Eliot has so forcibly 

of manual training is that found in the series of five articles by Professor 
Henderson, in the Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 53. 

^ " Is Manual Training a subject or a method of instruction?" Ed. Rev. 
27: 369; Davis, " Researches in Cross Education," Studies from Yale Psycho- 
logical Lab., Vol. 6, 1898; same subject, Pop. Sci. Mo., March, 1900; Report 
of Nat. Ed. Association for 1901: 759; "From Fundamental to Accessory, 
etc." Pedagogical Seminary, 6: 25; the conclusions of these writers have, 
however, been called in question; see Dexter. "Survival of the Fittest in 
Motor-Training," Ed. Rev. 23: 81. 

-Report cf National Commissioner of Ed., '95-6, 2: 1321, ef seq. 

^Report of National Educational Association, igoi: 270. 



THE CURRJCLLUM 189 

pointed out. He has said : " From one sixth to one 
fourth or even one third of the whole school time of 
American children is given to the subject of arithmetic, 
a subject which does not train a single one of the four 
faculties to develop which should be the fundamental 
object of education. It has nothing to do with observing 
correctl}-, or with recording accurately the results of ob- 
servation, or with collating facts and drawing just con- 
clusions therefrom, or with expressing clearly and forci- 
bly logical thought. Its reasoning has little application 
in the great sphere of the moral sciences, because it is 
necessary and not probable reasoning. In spite of the 
common impression that arithmetic is a "practical subject, 
it is of very limited application in common life, except in 
its simplest elements. . . . On the whole, therefore, 
it is the least remunerative subject in elementary educa- 
tion as now conducted.^ 

The chief value of arithmetic, being its every-day util- 
ity, is therefore social. Of culture value it is almost 
wholly destitute. In spite of these facts, which have been 
widely recognized in a theoretical way, a pedagogically 
discredited arithmetic still holds its prominent place in 
the curriculum and in the affections of examiners. 

History, with Geography and Civics. — These three 
subjects are grouped together because they should be 
taught and studied together or in close relation. History 
without geography has no substance ; geography without 
history is barren and without spiritual content. Civics 
rests upon history, and civic progress and civic duty can 
best be understood only through history. 

The value of history and civics is psycho-social, and is 
to be found in their power to arouse race and national 

^ Forum 14: 421-2; see also the Chicago Teachers' "Arithmetic Creed." 



190 



ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 



(social) instincts in the individual. They set going socio- 
motive forces. It is in their power to enrich and exalt 
the inner life, the spiritual nature, that the purely psycho- 
logical value of history and civics consists. These sub- 
jects make their appeal to imagination and the philosophic 
judgment. They stimulate assimilative activity and make 
character. 

Language and Literature. — Because language is the 
chief instrument of thought and the principal vehicle of 
expression, it is of the highest psychological value, both 
disciplinary and cultural. Exactness of thought, preci- 
sion and adequacy of expression, and the creation of noble 
ideals are the best psychological results of the right use 
of language and literature in the curriculum. 

Drav^^ing and Music. — Drawing has disciplinary 
value, because of its direct training of eye and muscle ; 
and as a medium of expression it is also cultural. 

Music trains one of the most important senses to fine- 
ness of discrimination ; and it enriches culture by giving 
enjoyment and by affording full expression to feelings 
which would otherwise be dumb. 

(b) Outline of the Curriculum 

The generic and abstract statements of the preceding 
pages find specific and concrete, and, it is hoped, practical, 
illustration and exemplification in the following tentative 
courses of study for the different stages of the educational 
ascent. The fact is kept in mind that the curriculum 
should be essentially one throughout. The curriculum 
below the university should be made up of the type studies 
selected from the social and psychological groups, 
forming in their aggregate that body of knowledge and 
source of power which every educated man or woman 
must have to-day in order to be in sympathetic touch with 



THE CURRICriA-M 191 

all phases of the world's work, and in order host to do 
some of that w cM'k. 

For the Elementary School 
A suggestive course of study for the rural school is 
given in detail on p. 30. It is readily adaptable to the 
requirements of a city school, no more variation being 
needed than would be needed to adjust the course to dif- 
ferent rural communities. In every case, whether in 
city or country, the stress should be laid upon such studies 
and exercises as will best fit the pupil to take an active, 
intelligent, reciprocal part in the higher life and progress 
of his own community. 

For the Secondary School ^ 

The discussion of the high school has for some time 
centered about the question whether it should " prepare 
for college or prepare for life." The decision, so far as 
one has been reached, seems to be that it should do both. 
If it can not serve both purposes through one curriculum, 
then more than one must be provided. Many pupils who 
enter the high school do not go to college afterward, 
because of lack of desire or lack of means and opportu- 
nity. Alany more than now enter the high school would 
avail themselves of a course of practical utility, if such 
were offered. This is found to be true in every instance 
where a high school has offered courses directly fitting 
pupils for business or an industrial vocation. 

It is neither difficult nor unduly expensive to provide 
high-school courses for differing needs, if the principle 
be kept in mind that all educational agencies have the 

1 Uniform Course of Study of Indiana, 1901—02: 183; The School Review, 
2: 379, 11: I, and 12: 545; Regents' Bulletin No. 501, 1900 (Albany, 
N. Y.), P- 122; Pedagogical Seminary, 9: 63; Atlantic Monthly, 94: 368; 
The Educational Review, 16: 15; Hanus's " Educational Aims and Edu- 
cational Values." 



192 



ORGANIZATION AND ADMlSISiRATION 



same fundamental purpose, that all should be oriented 
to the common highway of life. And the matter will be 
further simplified if the colleges, realizing that their chief 
function is to develop poivcr rather than to specialize, 
will accept graduates from any of the high-school courses, 
except, perhaps, such as are strictly technical. 

The following arrangement of studies will serve to 
illustrate the interrelations and differences of the courses 
of the high school : 

Branches Pursued by All During First Two Years. 

Year i. 

Latin 5.' 

Algebra 5. 

Rhetoric with essay practice 3, and forensics i. 

Botany 5 (with free-hand drawing). 

Manual Training" 2 (with mechanical drawing). 

Vocal Music i (with practice at opening exercises). 

Gymnasium i. 



H 



Latin 5. 

Algebra 5. 

Rhetoric with essay practice 3, and forensics i. 

Geology 5 (with free-hand drawing). 

Manual Training 2 (with mechanical drawing). 

Vocal Music, as above. 

Gymnasium i. 

Latin 5. 

Geometry 3, alternating with Algebra 2. 

American Literature 3; essays and forensics i. 

Botany 5 (with free-hand drawing). 

Manual Training 2 (with mechanical drawing). 

Vocal Music, as above. 

Gymnasium 1 . 

' Figures following a subject show the number of exercises per week. 
- " Manual Training " includes " Domestic Training " for girls. 



THE CURRICULUM I93 

^ . Year 11. 

Latin 5. 

Gcuinetry 3, alternating with Algebra 2. 

American Literatnre, as above. 

Geology and Mineralogy 5 (with free-hand drawing). 

Manual Training 2 (with mechanical drawing). 

Essays and. forensics, based on Am. Hist. i. 

Vocal Music, as above. 

Gymnasium i. 

Latin 5. 

Geometry 5. 

American Literature 3. 

American History 2. 

Physics 5. 

Manual Training 2 (with free-hand and mechanical 

drawing). 
Essays and forensics i. 
Vocal jMusic, as above. 
Gymnasium i. 
Latin 5. 
Geometry 5. 
American Literature 3. 
American History 2. 
Physics 5. 
Manual Training 2 (with free-hand and mechanical 

drawing). 

Essays and forensics, as above. 

Vocal IMusic, as above. 

Gymnasium, i. 

^ Year hi. 

Classical. Scientific. 



' Latin 2, German 3. 
Greek 5. w 

Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. E 
Plane Trigonometry 5. r^ 

Forensics i. 
Latin 2, German 3. 
Greek 5. 

Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. ^* 
Solid Geometry 5. £ 

Library research i. 
Forensics i. 
Roark's Econ. — 13 



H 



German 3, French 2. 
Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. 
Plane Trigonometry 5. 
Physics 5. 
Forensics i. 

'German 3, French 2. 
Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. 
Solid Geometry 5. 
Chemistry 5. 
Forensics I. 



194 



ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 



<U 



Latin 5. 

German 5. 

Greek 5. 

Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2 

Library research i.^ 

Forensics i. 

Commercial. 



l-H 



German 5. 

French 5. 

Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. 

Chemistry 5. 

Surveying 2. 

Forensics i. 



Technical and Industrial. 



German 3, Spanish 2. 
Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. 
Commercial Geog. 3. 
' Arith. 2. 
Grammar 5. 
Forensics i. 



German 3, Sp. 2. 
Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist 2. 
Commercial Geog. 3. 
C < Arith. 2. 

Commercial law and 
commercial statistics 5. 
Forensics i. 



German 3, Sp. 2. 
Eng. Lit. 3, Eng. Hist. 2. 
Commercial law 5. 
Polit. Econ. and Com- 
mercial Hist. 5. 
Forensics i. 



H 



B 

u 



Year iv. 



H 



Classical. 




Latin 2, French 3. 




Greek 5. 


„■ 


German 5. 


E 


Psychology 5. 




Gen. Hist. 2. 


Forensics i. 





German 3. 
Drawing 2. 
Physics 5. 
Sol Geom. 5. 
Shop work y.' 
Forensics i. 

German 3. 

Drawing 2. 
J Chemistry 5. 

Analytics 5. 

Shop work 7, 
l Forensics i. 



German 5. 
Chemistry 5. 
Drawing 5. 
Shop work 10.' 
.Surveying 2. 



Scientific. 
French 5. 
Physiology 5. 
German 5. 
Psychology 5. 
Gen. Hist. 2. 
Forensics i. 



^ This should take much time in preparation, but only one period a week 
for reporting results. 

^ This includes " Domestic Science " for girls. 



THE CURRICULUM 



i95 





Latin 2, French 3. 






French 3. 


pj 


Greek 5. 




d 


Zoology 5. 


E 


German 5. 




E 


German 5. 




Element. Sociol. 3. 




4> 


Element. Sociol. 3. 


h 


Gen. Hist. 3. 
Forensics i. 

Latin 2. 
French 5. 






Gen. Hist. 3. 
.Forensics i. 

French 5. 
German 5. 


CT! 


German 5. 




th 


Zoology 5. 


E . 


Greek 5- 




E < 


Library research and 




Gen. Hist. 3, with 


much 


1- 


Science Seminar 2. 


H 


collateral library 
Logic 3. 
Forensics i. 


work. 


H 


Logic 3. 
Forensics i. 




Commercial. 




Te 


clinical and Industrial. 




' Spanish 5. 






"Mechanics 5. 


^• 


Stenography 5. 




^• 


Desc. Geom. 3. 


E • 


German 5. 




E • 


Drawing 2. 




Business composition and 

forms 3. 
Forensics i. 




Shop work 10. 

Bus. Comp. and forms 3. 




Spanish 5. 










Stenography 5. 






^Heat 5. 


w 


Commercial Arith 


. and 


oi 


Desc. Geom. 3. 


S - 


Bookkeeping 5. 




E . 


Drawing and Design 5. 


« 
H 


Typewriting and 

ing 5- 
^ Forensics i. 

Stenography 5. 
Spanish 5. 
German 5. 


Spell- 




Shop work 10. 
^ Study of Materials 2. 

'Electricity and Magnet- 


f^j 


Commercial Arith 


. and 




ism 5. 


E 


Bookkeeping 5. 




CO 


Shop work 10. 




Typewriting and 


Spell- 


E ■ 


Study of Materials 2. 


f-l 


ing 5- 






Drill in use of modern 




Drill in use of modern 




office facilities 2. 




office facilities 2. 






-Drawing and designing 5. 




Forensics i, 









196 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

It is believed that the general scheme of secondary 
studies above outlined is adaptable to the purposes and 
functions of the high school in the country, in the smaller 
towns, and in the large cities. A rural high school, or 
one in a small town, would probably use one of the 
courses only, not being able to use all, while the larger 
centers of population could well afford to provide all the 
opportunities shown in the diagram. The cost of main- 
taining all the courses would be not greatly more than that 
of properly maintaining any one of them. During the 
first two years there is no differentiation of work ; during 
the last two there are many " constants " common to all 
the courses. Throughout all courses provision is made 
for more or fewer cultural subjects, and during the undif- 
ferentiated first two years some utilitarian work is re- 
quired of all. 

The teaching of such subjects as are common to the 
several courses will be of the same character in each 
course. 

All exercises that aim at the unification of the social, 
purposive, and cultural sentiments of the school, and they 
should be numerous, should be so arranged as to exert 
their influence upon all. This would go far to correct the 
evils of early specialization ; the graduates of the high 
school, from whatever course, would go forth into the 
community with many sentiments, ideals, and purposes 
in common, and this would be altogether good both for 
the individual and for the social whole. The social sol- 
idarity which makes the difiference between a democratic 
state and a mere mass of people can be secured in no way 
better than by having boys and girls of different social 
and industrial classes pursue the same cultural and liber- 
alizing studies together. 



THE CURKICILVM ii)y 

For the College 

The curriculum of the college is to be determined by 
the function and place of the collogo in a system of higher 
education. 

If the college does its own distinctive work, it will well 
serve as a medium by which the student may best pass 
from the high school to the university or to the profes- 
sional school ; and at the same time it will fit such as do 
not expect to go into the university, for taking and sus- 
taining a place among the liberally educated. The busi- 
ness of the college is to take up the work of education 
where the high school leaves it, and without " lost mo- 
tion " on the one hand or too close an imitation of the 
university on the other, carry forward the educative pro- 
cess to a point just short of close specialization. The 
function of the college is to give breadth and power rather 
than narrow training and specialized skill. 

If the college works successfully to these ends its cur- 
riculum must include those subjects a study of which will 
result in giving the student a knowledge and sympathetic 
appreciation of the great world movements and the forces 
that have caused them, in politics, in literature, in science, 
and in art. 

In the following suggestive schedule of studies for the 
college an attempt is made to give specific form to the 
principles above laid down. 

If the American college accepts the suggestions made 
by President Butler,^ and shortens the Bachelor's course 
to two years, all the college preparatory work outlined 
above for the high school will be prerequired. If the col- 
leges continue to offer courses as now arranged, such ex- 
tended preparatory work in the high school should not 

* See his Report to the Trustees, for 1902. 



/98 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

be required for admission to college, and the time for the 
Bachelor's degree should not be less than 144 weeks, four 
years of three terms each or, preferably, three years of 
four terms each. 

There is so little probability of an early settlement of 
this question as to the length of the college curriculum 
that no attempt is here made to arrange the subjects by 
years. But the general order and relative proportion of 
the subjects in the two groups, classical and scientific, are 
indicated. 

Classical Group. 

Languages: Two ancient and at least three modern lan- 
guages, one of which should be English, should be required. 

Literature : The Literature of each of the languages studied. 

History: Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern, with intensive work 
in at least one elected division. 

Mathematics: Advanced Algebra, Analytics, plane and spher- 
ical Trigonometry. 

Sciences: Brief general courses in biological and physical 
sciences. 

Psychology: A general view of the matter and methods of 
modern psychology. 

Education. 

Sociology: This should include economics, political and so- 
cial science, with a history of each, and much intensive, inductive 
work. 

Philosophy (Metaphysics) : The course should include the 
history of philosophic thought, the theories of modern philosophy, 
and ethics. The work in one or more of these divisions should be 
intensive. 

Music and Art: General required courses and special elec- 
tives. 

For en si cs. 

Cultural lecture courses. 

Scientific Group. 

The Obsert'otional Sciences: General required courses in all, 
showing their close interrelations ; intensive work in special 
electives. 



THE CURRICULUM I99 

The Experimental Sciences: As in the preceding. 

Mathematics: Throngh the differential and integral Calculus, 
with electives in higher subjects. 

History: A general view, with special work in American His- 
tory. 

Languages: Required courses in English, French and Ger- 
man. Electives in other modern languages and in Latin. 

Literature: English and American; general courses. 

Philosophy: General view. 

Sociology: General view. 

Forensics. 

Cultural lecture courses. 

It is believed that every subject which the college, dis- 
tinctively as such, should offer is included in the groups 
here given, and that nothing is included which the college 
can aft'ord to omit. The lists of subjects given above 
are suggested on the assumption that the college, when 
it comes again to do its own proper work, will offer 
only the two standard courses, not permitting narrow 
specialization. Therefore, neither technological nor pro- 
fessional training is here included in the work of the 
college. 

The Products of a College Education. — Education 
through any agency is a process, and in the college grad- 
uate its products should be (i) a body of well-digested 
knowledge; (2) some power of independent study and 
investigation; (3) liberal culture, which must include an 
impelling desire to continue the educational process in 
some zi'ay; (4) and a moral strength that shall enable its 
possessor to keep his feet in the stress of the world's 
forces. Of course, it may be said with truth that these 
should be the products of the educational process in the 
high school, even in the grades. The difference is one of 
degree, and of emphasis upon the kind of knowledge. 
The point to be made here is that it is not the business 



200 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

of the college to copy the university, nor to overlap too 
far upon the legitimate work of the high school. 

Knowledge. — The knowledge which the student 
should have as the result of pursuing a college course 
should be general rather than special, and should acquaint 
him with the great world movements and the forces that 
have brought them about. He must know, and be in 
sympathy with, the best that has been done in all the great 
fields of human endeavor in politics, in literature, in 
science, and in art. This is not too much to require, in 
spite of the fact that the special modes of human effort 
have multiplied greatly in late years, and the sum of 
knowledge is increasing at a rapid rate. It is not meant 
that the college graduate should know any one thing as 
the specialist knows it, but that he should know enough 
to understand and appreciate zvhat the specialist in any 
field is trying to do, and what relation the truth the spe- 
cialist is searching for has to other truths. With a proper 
correlation of subjects in the college curriculum (and the 
college is the place where correlation has its greatest 
value), such knowledge will not be difficult to impart or 
to acquire. 

The business of the college as regards knowledge is 
not to add to the sum total (that is the duty of the uni- 
versity), but to place what is already known in possession 
of its students, so presented that the learner shall be 
filled with a lasting desire to keep in interested and intel- 
ligent touch with all phases of intellectual attainment 
throughout his post-collegiate life. 

Power. — Power is gained from independent self- 
directed work. This does not mean, it may be necessary 
to repeat, that the college student is to do research work 
in the university sense ; but original work may be done 



THE CURRICULUM 201 

in the rediscovery and mastery of truth which, however 
long- established, is yet new to the student. It is this 
kind of original work which results in the power that the 
college should give. It is original in the sense that its 
methods and results are new to the student ; and it is 
independent in the sense that the pupil should do much of 
it upon his own initiative and without specific direction 
from the teacher. To secure the best results some part, 
however small, of the work in the most important of the 
subjects offered by the college should be intensive. The 
student will thus gain some insight into the methods and 
value of thoroughness, and will acquire some of the habits 
and impulsion of the researcher. 

Culture.^ — Culture is a product of breadth of knowl- 
edge, familiarity with the conventions of good society, 
ready sympathy in thought and feeling, and personal 
poise. Some of these elements the college can put into 
the life of the student ; others are either innate or absent. 
If innate the college must develop them; if absent, no 
form of education can bestow them. 

Breadth of knowledge should be provided for not only 
in the subjects of the regular curriculum, but in suggested 
courses of reading, and general lectures by members of 
the faculty and others. Each member of the faculty 
should, in these lectures, tell the whole student body what 
is being done throughout the world, in his own depart- 
ment of knowledge, and he should tell it so simply, so 
clearly, and with such enthusiasm as to make that depart- 
ment of knowledge seem to every student a highly desira- 
ble field to know more about. In short there should be 



^Education 20: 557; Educational Review i: 105; N. E. A. Proceedings 
1901 : 619; School and College i: i; World's Work 8: 4980; Educational 
Review 16: 147. 



202 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

much real " university extension " within the college 
itself, from one department to another. 

The subject which should focus all others and correlate 
them is philosophy, the lecture presentation of which 
should always be by a man with a very clear general view 
of all the great fields of human learning and inquiry, and 
with power to set each in right perspective. 

A series of lectures here indicated, by the college 
faculty, and by men and women not in the faculty, who 
have thought most and done most and can tell it best, 
would do more to broaden and enrich student life in 
college than quadruple the same time spent in routine 
class work. Any student going from such influences 
into university work would never suffer from the ignorant 
and unsympathetic narrowness which is so often the re- 
proach of the modern specialist.^ 

For the Teachers' Training School 

The Function of the Teachers' School. — There seems 
to be danger of forgetting that the sole concern of the 
state teachers' training school is with the improvement of 
teaching, and that the chief stress should be laid upon 
improving the work in the rural schools. 

In adapting its work to the educational needs of the 
whole community which it serves, the training school 
must neither refuse to recognize the actual conditions 
under which its pupils will have to teach, nor fail to 

^ Much has been written of late upon the topics touched on in the pre- 
ceding pages. Very interesting matter will be found in the following 
articles, "A New Definition of a Cultured Man," (Eliot), World's Work, 
6: 3806; "The Ideal Education," Independent, 54: 2660; "Higher Educa- 
tion and Citizenship," Independent, 54: 690; "The Aim of Education," 
Journal of Pedagogy, 16: 43; "Education and the Individual," .Journal 
of Pedagogy, 14: 321; "Law of Future Specific and Social Efficiency," 
Journal of Pedagogy, 15: 119; "Education for Social Control," N. E. A. 
Report, 1901: 619; "Scholarship and Service" (Butler), Ed. Rev. 24: i; 
"Fundamental Principles of American Education," Ed. Rev. 24: 187. 



THE CURRICULUM 203 

show its students and its public liow these conditions may 
be improved. 

Unmindful of these facts, some teachers' training 
schools offer collegiate courses of study, with collegiate 
degrees, and think more of fitting students for college 
than of their own proper work. 

To a forgetfulness of their real duties also may be at- 
tributed the pronounced tendency of most of these schools 
to an undue insistence upon high standards of admission 
to even their shortest courses. A city teachers' training 
school, or one situated in a state where rural high schools 
are numerous, may require its students to present a high 
school diploma as a condition of admission. In com- 
munities where high schools are few such a requirement 
would be unjust. It is far better that the many should 
get some help in their work than that only a select few 
should be offered superior advantages. 

This is in no sense intended to mean that thoroughness 
of scholarship need not be one of the products of the 
teachers' training school. It simply means that however 
desirable it might be to have every rural school taught 
by a college graduate, such an ideal is at present unat- 
tainable, and the teachers' school must face actual condi- 
tions and make the best of them. 

The college and the university should uphold and raise 
higher the standards and dignity of advanced scholarship. 
The chief business of the teachers' training school is, first, 
to give thoroughness in a teaching knozvledge of the com- 
mon branches; second, to show how to organize, direct, 
and teach a school ; and, third, to introduce its students 
to the higher branches. 

These are the essentials ; more may be done if oppor- 
tunity and means allow. 



204 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

There may, for example, be a special course for kinder- 
gartners and for graduates of high schools, and ad- 
vanced work for students who have completed an academ- 
ic course in college. But the first and plainest and most 
important duty of the state teachers' training school is 
to meet the needs and conditions of the rural schools. 

Two Courses Offered. — The teachers' training school 
should ofifer at least two courses, a shorter and a longer ; 
the one for such students as can prepare in a half year, 
or at most a year, for work in the elementary schools ; 
the other for such as can spend more time in preparation 
for better work or higher positions. 

The Short Course. 
(24 to 48 weeks.) 
Arithmetic, Yz^ 
Algebra, i.* 
Civics, y2. 

Composition and Rhetoric, I. 
Drawing, i, twice a week. 
Forensics, i, once a week. 
Geography, ^2. 
Grammar, J/2. 

Gymnasium Practice, twice a week. 
Manual Training, i, twice a week. 
Nature Study (Elementary Sciences), i. 

Observation in the Pedagogical Museum and in the Model 
School, with oral and written reports, I, three times a week. 
Pedagogy (theoretical), J/. 
Penmanship, Yz. 
Physiology and Hygiene, ^.' 
Professional Reading, ^, once a week. 
Vocal Music, i, three times a week. 

1 Subjects marked J^ are taken for one-half of the time of the course. 

^ Subjects marked i are taken throughout the course. If Monday is 
used as a holiday, instead of Saturday, as is the case in many schools, 
much time will be saved. 

^ All pupil-teachers should be especially instructed in detecting physical 
defects in children, and in what to do in cases of accident. 



THE CURRICULUM. 205 

The Long Course. 
(Two years of 48 weeks each.) 
Year i. 
Higher Arithmetic completed. 
Rhetoric, with much practice in composition. 
Botany. 

Pedagogy (general outline). 
Drawing, twice a week. 
Forensics, once a week. 
iMusic, twice a week. 
Manual Training, once a week. 

Higher Algebra. 

American Literature. 

Physiology and Hygiene. 

Psychology. 

Drawing, twice a week. 

Forensics, once a week. 

iMusic, twice a week. 

Manual Training, once a week. 

Higher Algebra, cont. 

American Literature. 

Physics. 

General ^lethodology, 3 times a week ; observations 

in the Model School, with oral and written reports, 

twice a week. 
Drawing, twice a week. 
Forensics, once a week. 
Music, twice a week. 
Manual Training, once a week. 

Higher Algebra, completed. 

English Literature. 

Zoology. 

Professional reading and observation in the Model 

School, with oral and written reports. 
Drawing, twice a week. 
Forensics, once a week. 
Music, twice a week. 
Manual Training, once a week. 
Gymnasium Practice throughout the year. 



2o6 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Year ii. 

Plane Geometry. 

English Literature and English History. 

Chemistry. 

Educational Economy : School equipment. 

Observation in Pedagogical Museum and Model School, 

with oral and written reports, 3 times a week. 
Forensics, once a week. 

Trigonometry. 

General History. 

Sociology. 

Educational Economy: Organization and Administration 

of Schools. 
Practice teaching. 
Forensics, once a week. 

Review of the Common Branches, with their Method- 
ology. 

American History and Civics. 

Practice teaching, and Observation in the Model School. 

Forensics, once a week. 

Review of the Common Branches, with their Method- 
ology, continued. 

School Laws of the State, once a week. 

History of Education : library study. 

Practice teaching. 

Forensics, and development of a thesis. 

In urging the need and expediency of such courses as 
those given above, the emphasis is placed, as it should be, 
on the actual conditions and requirements of the 
majority of rural schools. In those States that have a 
large urban population and numerous high schools the 
State teachers' training schools can afford to have higher 
standards of admission, offer stronger courses, and pre- 
pare teachers for the highest positions in the public 
schools. The State teachers' training school should also 
offer courses especially designed for county superinten- 



THE CfRRICriL'M 



loy 



dents. Such cmirses woulil cdiUain. among' other things, 
instruction in the school laws, in the best modes of 
administrative detail, and in plans for bringing the schools 
and community into closer touch. 

In some cases the training school may sustain courses 
for the training of institute instructors. 

B. Administration of the Curriculum 
(a) Ends in View 
The ends in view in planning and administering a 
course of study are (i) the discipline and culture of the 
individual, (2) his socialization, and (3) the careful 
economizing, to these ends, of the time and energy of 
both teacher and pupil. 

Discipline and Culture 

Discipline. — Discipline is that condition of the mind 
which is charcterized by power — power to perceive, to 
remember, to reflect, and to feel intensely, but to restrain 
feeling — and by skill to do these things quickly and well, 
and to express them adequately. 

General Discipline Possible. — Those who have 
claimed that there is no such thing as " general disci- 
pline," — that there are memories, but not memory , judg- 
ments, but not judgment, and so on, — are quite as wrong 
as those who, earlier, claimed that general discipline was 
the chief, if not the sole, end of education. The expe- 
rience of every educated man and woman, and the increas- 
ing demand, in every kind of business, for the graduates 
of high schools and colleges, give conclusive evidence of 
the value of general discipline. Such evidence is far 
stronger than any amount of mere a priori theorizing, or 
the sporadic experimenting that has been done in psycho- 
logical laboratories. 



2o8 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Discipline comes from hard work done with thorough- 
ness and with the sort of interest that gets its satisfaction 
in the mastery of a matter both for ultimate ends and 
also for the sake of mastering. It results from such an 
administration of the curriculum as holds the pupil stead- 
ily to independent work, tested constantly by clear, ac- 
curate, and definite results. The proof of discipline is 
the ability of the pupil, at any given point in the course 
of study, to do, with care and confidence, any or all of 
the essential work required up to that point, and to take 
up and quickly master new work. 

Culture. — Culture is a thing of the spirit ; it is the 
highest product of education. It rests upon knowledge, 
but is far more than knowledge. It manifests itself in 
personal bearing, in courtesy, in character, in depth and 
breadth of learning, and in the ability and willingness to 
use learning for self-enjoyment and for the happiness 
of others. 

So to administer the course of study that the pupils 
shall gain culture can be done only through the vital 
contact of the teacher's rich and cultured personality 
with the aroused and appetent personality of the pupil. 

Socialisation of the Individual ^ 
Criterion of Civilization. — The chief criterion of an 
advanced and advancing civilization is the degree of inter- 
dependence and mutual helpfulness of its members. The 
lowest society, that which is only one or two removes 

1 So rapid has been the growth of the educational ideal expressed by this 
phrase that there is already much good writing about it. A very few 
of the most helpful references are here appended: "Higher Individ- 
ualism as the End of Education," Journal of Pedagogy, 12: 230; 
Small's "Demands of Sociology upon Pedagogy"; Young's "Isolation in 
the School "; Dewey's " School and Society "; Henderson's " Education and 
the Higher Life"; "Social Movement in France," Proceedings N. E. A., 
1902: 383. 



THE CURRICULUM 209 

from the jungle, is eharactized l)y a crassly physical 
outworking- of the law of survival. As man ascends, the 
law still holds inexorably, but its outworking is more and 
more spiritual. The value of the individual, his fitness 
to survive, is expressed in social terms, in terms of the 
service he is able to render to social life and growth. It 
is this idea which gives substance and force to the modern 
ideal of Democracy. 

Mutual Obligations of Society and the Individual. — 
It has taken nearly twenty centuries to establish the free- 
dom of the individual among the most civilized nations. 
It is time now to recognize the inescapable reciprocal ob- 
ligations of the individual and the social whole. 

Public education must fit boys and girls to meet the 
m^aterial and spiritual needs of that public which educates 
them, instead of merely fitting them to get out of the pub- 
lic that which meets their own wants. This is what is 
meant by the phrase " socialization of the individual." 
It is to be attained by nothing short of putting school 
administration into the hands of men and women who 
are not themselves isolated from the social whole by their 
modes of thought and life, but who are in vital touch 
with all the great currents of human progress, are inspired 
by civic pride and patriotism, and are eager to bring each 
pupil into the full heritage of the race. 

Economy of Time and Energy 

The demand is stronger to-day than it has ever been 
that the time and energy of the learner be economized. 
Students of education are earnestly striving to meet this 
demand by determining essentials of subject-matter and 
essentials of method and management. This work is just 
beginning. 

Roark's Econ. — 14 



210 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

(b) Theories of Administering the Curriculum 

The " Culture Epoch " Theory 
About forty years ago, a disciple of Herbart outlined a 
scheme of cultural and moral education based upon the 
" culture epoch " theory.^ This theory assumes that the 
individual repeats, in his own development, the develop- 
ment of the race. The scheme of school education 
founded upon it provides for a succession of subjects and 
methods of presenting them that shall conform to the 
several more or less distinct epochs of racial evohition. 

In Germany. — In Germany, more than anywhere else, 
the culture epoch theory has been put into practice. But 
even there only the culture side of the work is considered 
in selecting material. The course begins with myths, and 
develops through Robinson Crusoe, Thuringian stories, 
and the Niebelungen Songs, and early periods of German 
history, to the latest epochs of national life. Literature 
and history are thus taken as the sources of interest and 
educative material. The relation of the pupil to his pres- 
ent material environment is practically ignored in the 
application of the theory. 

In America. — The theory has not been worked into 
the course of study to any considerable extent in this coun- 
try. Some experiments are going forward that will de- 
termine what is best in it, and how it may be modified to 
meet the conditions of American life.- So far as these ex- 
periments have gone they have emphasized the value of 
constructive work, some form of manual training, and 
have recognized by carefully planned exercises in nature 
study the individual's recapitulation of the race's long 
struggle with its material environment. 

' Ziller, " Grundlegung zur Lehre vom erz. Unterricht." 
^ See Scott's " Organic Education," D. C. Heath & Co. 



THE CURRICULUM 21 1 

Value of the Theory, — The chief vahie of the culture- 
epoch theory is in the side hght it throws upon child 
psychology, and in the recognition it gives to the individ- 
ual's oneness with the race. It is helpful in explaining 
certain tendencies and impulses\peculiar to children's 
growth. But it is doubtful whether anything of value 
has been or can be discovered by working conformably to 
the theory that might not be discovered through a sympa- 
thetic study of the individual without reference to his 
recapitulation of race development. 

Any attempt to apply the theory closely must be futile, 
for only the most general correspondences can be found 
between the periods of the child's development and the 
epochs of race growth. Even if it were possible to estab- 
lish exact correspondences, it would be unwise to plan a 
course of study and methods of teaching in strict con- 
formity therewith, for the sufficient reason that, in his 
recapitulation, the average child exhibits some characteris- 
tics it is highly desirable to eliminate. The child, as the 
heir of the race, should be put in possession of only the 
best which the race has gained for him. And he should 
be trained to adapt himself to the actual conditions of 
modern life, not to those of bygone eras.^^ 

Correlation of Studies 

Ziller, who sought to make practical application of the 
culture-epoch theory, also planned an arrangement of 
studies to secure economy of time and energy through 
association of subjects. The terms " correlation," " con- 
centration," and " coordination " have been used to de- 
scribe this arrangement.^ 

' See further, N. E. A. Report, '99: 576; Ed. Review, 15: 374; Ed. Review, 
17: 105; Journal of Fed., 12: 295; 16: 136. 

-Refer to Ed. Review, 10: 364; Report of Nat. Com. of Ed. '93—4, i: 
492- 



212 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

Definition of Terms. — So far as definitions may be 
drawn from the literature of the Herbartian writers and 
their critics, the term " correlation " is generic and in- 
cludes the other two. " Concentration " means the 
grouping or correlating of studies around a central core, 
between which and the other subjects some vital relation 
exists. 

" Coordination " is the correlation of several groups of 
studies with one another, each group made up of asso- 
ciated subjects, and equal in rank to each other group. 

Concentration. — Ziller used the literary and historical 
material of his culture-epoch scheme as the " core " of 
concentration. All the work of each grade was, as far as 
possible, to be concentrated around this culture material, 
and made subordinate to it. This plan of concentration 
left out nature study and constructive work. This idea 
has been worked out, theoretically, with considerable 
detail by the American Herbartians. In a few schools it 
has been applied practically with some success. 

Other cores of concentration than the culture material 
of literature and history have been suggested, and in some 
instances used. Col. Parker used Geography as a center ; 
and Dewey centers the work about the constructive activi- 
ties of the pupils. 

Coordination. — Some of the most careful students of 
education, whose thought is not too strongly tinctured 
with Herbartianism, urge the impossibility of complete 
concentration, of making any one branch supreme and 
subordinating all others to it. They suggest a correlation 
which shall recognize two or more coordinate groups of 
subjects, the subjects of each group being interrelated. 
Frick proposes two groups, the humanistic and the 
natural. De Garmo proposes three groups, — (i) the 



THE CURRICULUM 21^ 

humanistic, or cultural. (2) the natural, or scientific, and 
(3) the economic, or the group made up of tlie industrial 
and commercial arts. Prince offers four groups, — (i) 
the humanistic, made up of knowledge relating to man, 
(2) scientific, (3) mathematical, and (4) expressional. 
Harris insists upon five coordinate groups, — (i) litera- 
ture and art, (2) mathematics, (3) geography as natural 
science, (4) grammar as typical of logic and philosophy, 
(5) history, leading to sociology, politics, etc. 

Two Bases of Correlation. — In all this discussion, 
there has not been sufficient recognition given to the fact 
that the subject of correlation may be approached from 
two standpoints. Correlation may be based upon the 
relations existing between the subjects themselves; or it 
may be based upon the relation which the subjects sev- 
erally sustain to the mind of the learner. It is here con- 
tended that the mind of the learner is the chief or primary 
basis of correlation ; that the relations between the subjects 
themselves is secondary, and grows out of and depends 
upon the first. 

The contention that the mind of the learner is the true 
core of correlation is not new, but no scheme of correla- 
tion around it has been proposed, even by those who have 
most insisted that the pupil is the center. Prince comes 
nearest to recognizing the true basis of correlation in his 
fourth group, made up of expressional subjects. 

Correlation Based upon Mental Operations. — The 
operations of the mind being acquisition, assimilation, and 
expression, it is evident that the studies and exercises of 
the curriculum should be grouped as acquisitional, assimi- 
lafional, and expressional.'^ Under this scheme of relating 

1 Refer also to Roark's "Psychology in Education," pp. 155-265. and 
"Method in Education," pp. 96—103. 



214 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

the subjects to the pupil rather than relating them to 
one another, the acquisitional group includes science, the 
facts of nature, and history, the facts of man ; the assimi- 
lational group is made up of mathematics, the study of 
(juantity relations, and philosophy, or thought relations ; 
the expressional group is made up of language, literature, 
and the arts, all the forms and processes whereby hu- 
manity expresses itself. 

The Interrelation of Subjects. — The second and sub- 
sidiary basis of correlation, which is the relation of the 
several subjects to one another, is useful in making each 
subject or each group help in the mastery of other sub- 
jects and groups. For example, nature study is helpful 
in geography, geography in history, history in civics, and 
language and manual training in all subjects. The rich 
content of the acquisitional subjects furnishes the mate- 
rial for use in the assimilational group, and both the 
acquisitional and assimilational supply the subject-matter, 
the feeling and thought, for the expressional group. An 
even more intimate correlation of the materials of each 
subject rests upon the fact that in each subject there is 
matter to be acquired, assimilated, and expressed. 

Correlation upon the secondary basis, that of the inter- 
relations of subjects and their mutual and reciprocal use- 
fulness, is valuable in balancing the defects- of psycho- 
logical correlation. The former is objective, worked out 
in teaching the child, in his learning each branch not as 
an end in itself but as supplementary to others and as a 
tool in further learning. The latter, psychological corre- 
lation, is mainly subjective, guiding those who plan 
courses of study, and those who draw from these courses 
the materials with which teaching is done. Few courses 
of study have been psychologically planned. 



THE CURRICULUM 21 5 

Interest 

The theory and the practice of education owe much to 
Herbart and his disciples for focusing the thought of 
teachers upon the economic vahie of interest. The doc- 
trine of interest has been fruitful of good teaching, and 
of comfort and joy to the pupil, even though it has been 
pushed to an injurious extreme by some over-zealous 
practitioners. 

Interest Identical with Feeling. — Interest may be 
used as an equivalent term for any or all of the feelings, 
emotions, affections, or desires. We are interested in 
whatsoever arouses, stimulates, or gratifies feeling. 

It is to be regretted that Herbart himself did not 
clearly recognize the identity of interest with feeling as 
defined in the older psychology. To have perceived such 
identity would have saved much obscure discussion. 

All the phases of interest described by Herbart,^ and 
other forms not named by him, may be shown to be forms 
of feeling. Thus, the " interests arising from knowl- 
edge " are identical with the intellectual feelings; the " in- 
terests arising from human relations " are simply the 
feelings of sympathy, pity, the desire for society, and the 
desire for harmony with God.^ Such a view of interest 
places it upon familiar ground, and makes it plain that 
knowledge, growth of character, development of will 
power are all to be attained through the stimulation of 
right niofiz'es. 

Higher Application of the Doctrine of Interest. — 
The most important service rendered by Herbart, next to 
his showing the intrinsic economic value of interest in se- 
curing attention for rapid and effective work, was his in- 

' DeGarmo's " Herbart and the Herbartians," p. 64. 

^ See Roark's " Psychology in Education," Chaps. X and XI. 



2l6 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

sistence upon interest as desirable in itself, as a pleasant, 
comforting, and sustaining state of mind. The best and 
highest application of the doctrine sends students forth 
from any grade, alert to see and to hear the best, eager to 
know, open minded to the truth, full of noble aspirations. 

■Herbart showed how the emotional nature, which had 
been for centuries condemned and suppressed in the 
schools, could be made the mainspring of right action and 
a source of legitimate joy. There is no conflict whatever 
between this idea of interest and the idea of duty, or even 
of the necessity of drudgery. The feeling of oughtness 
is innate in the human being, and the performance of 
duty gratifies this feeling and so prompts to the further 
discharge of duty. So far from there being antagonism 
between drudgery and interest, it is interest that makes 
the performance of drudgery possible. Drudgery may 
be defined as work which is uninteresting in itself, but 
which must be done in order to the attainment of some 
end that is desired. Interest carries the worker through 
the drudgery to the desired result, and hence the need 
that the teacher shall often direct the attention of the 
pupil to ultimate goals, fixing his interest upon them, and 
showing from biography, past and present, how faithful 
application to the present task will lead to the full satis- 
faction of his right ambitions. The function of the 
teacher is not to follow blindly the interests of the pupil, 
but to arouse in him interest in the work he ought to do. 
One of the highest pleasures comes through the conscious- 
ness of overcoming obstacles, of facing down a disagree- 
able thing, to reach something finally worth while. 

Some Misapplications of the Doctrine. — Although 
Herbart clearly meant by interest " something of vast 
importance to the development of the individual, not a 



THE CURIUCULLM. 217 

mere tickling of the mind for transient ends," yet some 
of his too ardent followers have contended that the tran- 
sient interest, the mere passing whim of child or student, 
is the guide pointing the way the teacher must follow. 
This extreme and harmful view has not only been ad- 
vocated theoretically but has been put into actual practice, 
in one instance, at least, going so far as to allow the chil- 
dren of an elementary school to plan the exercises from 
day to day. 

The Doctrine of Election.^ — There is some danger 
of a similar misapplication of the doctrine of interest in 
the later doctrine of election in studies, so earnestly urged 
in recent years. A revolt from the prescriljed narrow 
and formal curriculum of former days was inevitable, 
but it should not reach the extreme of anarchy. Indi- 
vidual interests, aptitudes, and social needs are sufficiently 
and safely provided for if choice is permitted between 
several different courses or groups of studies in the high 
school and college. To speak of election below the high 
school is, surely, to " darken counsel by words without 
knowledge." A principle which is fundamental, and 
therefore safe, should determine the extent of election, 
namely, to the learner should be given that knozvlcdge 
and those tools ivhich the race has found most serviceable 
in bringing it to zvhere it noza is. 

To do otherwise is to make the accumulated experience 
and wisdom of the race count for little as compared with 
the inexperienced whim or unreasoned impulse of the 
pupil. 

In discussing this question of electives much has been 
said of the differences between individuals, and the need 

1 Refer to Education 21: 515; Forum 31: 599; Educational Review 4: 
53, 142; Report of Nat. Ed. Assoc. '97: 373; Educational Review 5: 142; 
Report of Nat. Ed. Assoc. 1900: 428; School Review n: 690. 



2i8 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

of adapting school work to these differences. But the 
fact remains that children are more alike than they are 
different, and that early specialization is impracticable and 
unwise. 

There is plenty of room for individual variation in 
work on the same subjects. All may take the same 
nutriment, but each will assimilate in his own way. 
With all the hubbub about the " individual " no one has 
yet offered an individualistic course of study. Unless 
the child has a markedly strong bent in some direction 
he has no need of electives below the second or third 
year of the high school. 

The Aims of the Different Schools. — The purpose of 
the elementary school is to acquaint the pupil with the 
alphabets of human knowledge and progress. The pur- 
pose of the secondary school is to put him into more secure 
possession of these and to have him use them either in 
preparing for advanced study or in preparing for a voca- 
tion. The aim of the college is to introduce the student 
to the whole circle of knowledge, that he may be able to 
choose which sector he shall make his own. There can 
be no intelligent and real choice without a knowledge of 
values. In none of the courses or groups of study, there- 
fore, between which choice is offered, should any one of 
the great divisions of human knowledge and culture be 
unrepresented. 

(c) Waste in Administration of Curriculum 

The two greatest causes of educational waste are (l) 
inefificient teaching, and (2) using more time than is 
needed. Inefficient teaching always wastes time : but time 
may be wasted where the teaching is good, owing to faulty 
methods of organization and administration of the sys- 
tem as a whole. The faults of school organization that 



THE CCliKlCL'Li'M 2IQ 

have wasted most time are ( i ) inllexible gradatitjii, 
(2) " block " promotion (the two together constituting 
what has so well been named the " lock-step "), and (3) 
the shortness of the school year. 

Grades and Promotions. — The introduction of the 
graded system into school work, by Sturm, was a great 
step forward in the economical administration of the cur- 
riculum. But like many other good things, it was carried 
to a harmful extreme, and it took two or three centuries 
to reach the conviction that inflexible gradation and yearly 
promotion in blocks are fertile sources of waste. 

After the glamour of the idea of strict uniformity 
faded, it did not take long to realize that the plan of mov- 
ing whole grades forward by yearly promotions involved 
other wasteful practices. Promotions were made to de- 
pend largely upon set examinations, and examinations 
were held mainly for the purposes of determining promo- 
tions. If a pupil failed in one or more subjects he was 
usually required to re-take the whole work of the grade 
in which the failure was made. Bright pupils, not having 
enough to do, became lazy and indifferent. Dull pupils, 
being driven too fast, became discouraged and dropped 
out of school. 

Schoolmen and the public both came to feel that the 
schools must give every pupil an opportunity and stimu- 
lus to do his best and to advance as rapidly as his best 
would justify. This feeling has resulted in much care- 
ful and valuable experimenting to discover the best means 
of economizing pupil time and energy.^ 

^ See "Promotions and Examinations," Bureau of Ed., Wash., D. C. ; 
"Lock-step in Ed.," Atlantic Monthly 79: 749; "Successful Exper. in Pro- 
moting," Educational Review 18: 23; "Promotion of Bright and Slow 
Pupils," Educational Review 19: 296; Nat. Report '90— '91, 2: 981; Nat. 
Ed. Assoc. Report, '99: 163; 1900: 332; 1901 : 285; The World's Work 
6: 3785. 



220 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

The following conclusions drawn from experiments al- 
ready made, furnish safe ground from which to push fur- 
ther experimentation. 

Average Length of Course. — The course of study 
between the kindergarten and the high school should be 
planned so that the " average pupil " can cover it in six 
years. This can be done, but only by making the school 
year consist of four terms of ten or twelve weeks each, 
instead of three terms, or, as is most usually the case, 
two. 

The rapid growth of the " vacation school " idea is 
sufficient evidence that pupils do not need three months 
absence from school. It has long been evident to teachers 
and parents that a vacation of a full fourth of a year is 
harmful to the best interests of the pupil and of the school. 
By the four-term arrangement two full school years could 
be saved out of every eight, thus reducing the time to six 
years, without weakening the course of study or lessening 
the total amount of work done. The terms should be 
used more as promotion intervals than as time allotments 
for the completion of a subject. 

This arrangement would permit the slow pupil to com- 
plete the course below the high school in about the same 
length of time it now takes the bright one to do it. 

Examinations. — The teaching value of examinations 
has been discussed elsewhere.^ As an important element 
in educational economy they are rapidly falling into dis- 
esteem and disuse, in so far as promotions are made 
dependent upon them.- The final examination, at its best, 
is not a conclusive test of the pupils' fitness or unfitness 
to proceed. A final examination should never count as 

' See Roark's " Method in Education," p. 92. 

^"Promotions and Examinations," (White), Circular of Information 
No. 7, 1 87 1, Bureau of Education, Washington. 



THE CURRICULUM 221 

more than half, if so much, in the making up of " pass- 
ing " records. In not a few schools the examination for 
promotion has been abandoned altogether, and the pupils 
are advanced upon the recommendation of the teacher, 
indorsed by the principal. 

Promotion Intervals. — Reclassifications and promo- 
tions should be made often enough to enable the brightest 
pupils to forge ahead as fast as their superior ability will 
carry them and also to enable the most backward pupils 
to move as slowly as they need to do in order to a confi- 
dent mastery of their work. 

As suggested in a preceding paragraph, the school year, 
which should be forty-eight weeks long, may conveniently 
be divided into four terms, and these may be used as pro- 
motion periods. When by the end of a term, any con- 
siderable number of pupils in a given grade show marked 
superiority to their fellows who started with them in the 
same grade they should be moved up a whole term (one- 
fourth of a year). As the pupils of the advanced term 
should be reviewing at the beginning of that term, the 
newly promoted pupils will have but little difficulty in 
catching step with them and keeping the pace throughout 
the term. 

At the close of any given year, the strongest pupils 
should be called out from all the grades of the same rank 
and put into a division to themselves, with a teacher who 
can send them forward as they ought to go. Such a 
group of pupils would be able in a year to overtake a 
grade two years ahead of them at the time of starting. 
Thus, the strong group that would start separate work 
at the beginning of the third year, would be able at the 
end of a year to unite with the fifth year pupils at the be- 
ginning of the fifth year. An arrangement similar to that 



222 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

just described has been in force in Cambridge, Mass., for 
many years. 

The plan may be better understood from the accom- 
panying- diagram and explanations, taken from the Report 
of the Cambridge Schools for 1902 : 

" In the grammar schools special teachers are appointed 
to help such pupils as seem able to do the work in less 
than six years, and to aid those who without personal in- 
struction would require more than six years. This action 
of the committee removes the most serious objection to 
the graded system of schools. 

" The course of study is divided in two ways : ( i ) into 
six sections ; (2) into four sections ; each section covering 
a year's work. Pupils taking the course in six years are 
classified in six grades, called the fourth, fifth, sixth, 
seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Those taking it in 
four years are classified in four grades, called grades 
A, B, C, and D. When pupils are promoted to the gram- 
mar schools they begin the first year's work together. 
After two or three months they are separated into two 
divisions. 



-^4 years 



-^•S years 






_^5 years 



-^6 yea's 



Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade 

" One division advances more rapidly than the other, 
and during the year completes one fourth of the whole 
course of study. The other division completes one sixth 
of the course. 



THE CURRICL'Ll'M 223 

" During- the second }ear the pu[)ils in grade B are in 
the sanie room with the sixth grade. At the beginning of 
the year they are five months (one half the school year) 
behind those in the sixth grade. After two or three 
months, grade B is able to recite with the sixth grade, 
and at the end of the year both divisions have completed 
one half the course of study — the one in two years, and 
the other in three years. The plan for the last half of 
the course is the same as for the first half, the grades 
being known as the seventh, eighth, and ninth in the one 
case, and as C and D in the other. 

" There are also two ways of completing the course in 
five years : ( i ) any pupil who has completed one half the 
course in two years may at the end of that time 
be transferred to the seventh grade, and finish 
the course in three years; (2) any pupil who has com- 
pleted one half the course in three years may at the 
end of that time be transferred to grade C, and finish the 
course in two years. In both cases these changes can be 
made without omitting or repeating any part of the 
course." 

Recently, much interest has been taken in the " Ba- 
tavia experiment " in aiding the progress of backward 
and slow pupils.^ The plan, in brief, is to place two 
teachers in a room, one to conduct recitations in the 
usual way, the other to give individual assistance to the 
pupils in their study. The reports of results so far ob- 
tained are favorable to the plan. 

Time in the High School and College. — But it is by 
no means solely in the elementary school that time is 
wasted. The waste goes on quite as much in the second- 

^ See the Reports of Supt. Jno. Kennedy, Batavia, N. Y. Also the 
Journal of Pedagogy 14: 89, 130; and 16: i. 



224 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

ary school and college as in the grades. Tradition has 
made a sort of fetich of the four year period, and in spite 
of the group system in a few high schools and colleges 
and the strong recommendations of Eliot and Butler to 
shorten the time spent in college, all classes of school 
officials seem fearful of results if the four year course 
be given up or modified. 

But the same opportunities for rapid work and prompt 
advancement should be given in the higher institutions 
as in the elementary schools, though in a different way. 
In the grades the pupils are grouped ; in the high school 
and college the studies should be grouped according to 
the laws of real correlation, and students encouraged to 
take more or fewer groups at a time, according to their 
capacity. A certain number of groups should constitute 
the requirement for graduation, and the student should 
receive his diploma upon the satisfactory completion of 
the required number of groups, whether it has taken him 
two years or ten to complete them. It is true, such an 
arrangement would do away with the classes — freshman, 
sophomore, etc. — and with class spirit, class " rushes," 
and such mediaevalisms, but such losses would be a great 
gain. 

The School Year. — The greatest saving of time, how- 
ever, greatest because time is saved to all, whether dull 
or bright, is that secured through the lengthening of the 
school year. Most private normal schools are open forty- 
eight weeks in the year ; many state normal schools have 
a summer term ; Chicago University has four regular 
quarters (forty-eight weeks), and the older universities 
are adopting practically the same plan, by holding " sum- 
mer schools." The experience of these institutions, to- 
gether with that of the cities that have vacation schools. 



THE CURRICULUM 225 

has demonstrated the great vahie of a longer school year. 

If the teaching be of the right sort, and adapted to the 
seasons, the summer, for example, being availed of for 
nature study and school gardening, the pupils will be 
happier and healthier in school than out. 

As for the teachers and students in high school and 
college, there appears no sufficient reason why they should 
need a longer vacation than other brain workers. 

A Bachelor's Course of Three Years. — If the higher 
institutions which offer courses leading to bachelors' de- 
grees should adopt the four-term plan, there could be no 
complaint from any quarter at their granting the bache- 
lor's degree at the end of three years, for the actual time 
spent in course would be the same as under the prevailing 
four-year plan. Under a combination of the group sys- 
tem and the four-term plan, a good student could in two 
years satisfy all legitimate requirements for a bachelor's 
degree. The needs of others, who would require more 
than two years and less than three for the completion of 
a course, could be met by holding semi-annual commence- 
ments. This plan, or some modification of it, has been 
used successfully by institutions as diverse in aims and 
methods of work as private normal schools and Chicago 
University. With the passing of the traditions of a four- 
year course and an annual commencement will pass also 
much wasting of the time and energy of the student. 
(d) Educational Experimentation 

It is a noteworthy fact that most speaking and writing 
upon educational administration is largely theoretical. 
The questions have usually been approached from the 
a priori standpoint, and therefore education is not yet a 
science. 

But it is clear that in education as in everything else, 

Roark's Econ.— 15 



226 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

the scientific method of advance is the only one from 
which real results may be expected. Hence the impera- 
tive need of broad observation, experimentation, and in- 
duction. The only way to determine whether a plan of 
school administration is workable is to work it for a 
sufficiently long period of time, and carefully to note re- 
sults. There has been more or less conscious experimen- 
tation in the past decade or so, but it has been too 
sporadic, too brief, and its results too little tested and 
verified by others to make it of much value. 

Educational Observation. — In order to secure facts 
upon which to base intelligent experimentation, much ob- 
servation of prevailing educational methods should be 
done. Such observation has been carried on over a large 
area by the General Education Board, and the data are 
published in " Southern Education," Knoxville, Tenn.^ 
Similar work in individual schools has been going on 
actively under the direction of Dr. J. M. Rice, Director of 
the Society of Educational Research. These and many 
other observations on actual school work and its results 
should be carefully tabulated and digested by a committee 
of experts, appointed by the National Educational Asso- 
ciation, and the conclusions published widely. The com- 
mittee should also recommend, from year to year, certain 
definite experiments to be made. 

Practical Difficulties. — Several practical difficulties 
lie in the way of thorough educational experimentation. 
Of these, educational conservatism is perhaps the chief. 
School boards, superintendents, and patrons all dislike or 
fear to leave the beaten track. 

Short tenure of office by boards and superintendents is 
another obstacle. It is safe to say that trustworthy re- 

^ See Review of Reviews, 30: 327. 



THE CURRICCLUM 227 

suits can not be reached in a shorter time than five years, 
because the true test of a method of teaching: or of school 
administration is the eflfect it has upon the pupil's later 
work. 

Still another difficulty is the impossibility of securing 
identity of conditions in (different schools, or even in the 
case of different pupils of the same grade. In the phys- 
ical laboratory, identity of conditions, of apparatus, of 
manipulation, is required and is easily obtained. It can 
not be so in the educational laboratory. Nevertheless, 
much valuable experimentation can and should be done 
in school work. As has been suggested by Hanus, 
every system of schools may be made an " experiment 
station," where careful and sympathetic investigation can 
be carried on. 

All schools that have, or can secure, the means for 
such work should keep a card record of the post school 
life of all the pupils that leave the school at the end of 
the seventh year or after. Some arrangement should 
be made by which such pupils may be heard from at least 
once a year. The proper keeping of such a record would 
be an enormous task, but in no other way can data be 
collected from which to draw trustworthy conclusions 
as to the value of different modes of school administra- 
tion, different methods of teaching, and the relative in- 
fluence of environment, heredity, and schooling. 

Educational Bulletins. — Just as the results of the ex- 
periments made at the various agricultural experiment 
stations throughout the U. S. are sent out in regularly 
issued bulletins to thousands of farmers every month, so 
should the processes and results of educational experi- 
ments be sent out free to every school interested in the 
particular experiments reported. Such bulletins are 



228 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

issued and distributed by several States, notably Pennsyl- 
vania and Wisconsin, and the National Bureau of Educa- 
tion at Washington has an enormous mailing list for its 
incomparable reports. But what is needed is that every 
superintendent and principal in the United States shall 
receive at short intervals clear reports of actual work 
being done in educational experiments. Those engaged 
in the actual work of teaching should be given every en- 
couragement to undertake a verification of results reached 
by experiment already made, and to report results care- 
fully and fully to some central authority. Further, no 
good reason appears why the Federal Government should 
not extend the franking privilege to such bulletins, under 
the same conditions as now govern the mailing of agri- 
cultural bulletins. 



III. CORRELATION OF SCHOOL AND COM- 
MUNITY 

(i) THE INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS OF EDU- 
CATION 

As previously said, education is, according- to its organ- 
ization, formal or informal. Formal education is carried 
on by specialized agencies and, as the term indicates, 
under definite forms. 

The chief institution established by the community for 
formal education is the school ; but other institutional 
factors have great importance. Of these, the most effec- 
tive are (i) the home; (2) the church, including the 
Sunday school; (3) the press; (4) the platform. The 
home is placed in this list, because, although it can hardly 
be claimed as an institution primarily established for edu- 
cative purposes, yet its development and training of the 
young are largely formal and of the first importance. 
Other agencies which now are best classed as informal — 
such as the library, the museum, and the art gallery, are 
rapidly being brought into the list of formal factors. On 
the other hand, all those classed as formal exert great in- 
fluence in informal ways, — that is, without definite teach- 
ing purpose, but through their own suggestive influence 
and the imitativeness of the young. 

As the tide of popular interest in education rises, the 

conviction grows that all institutions which make for 

the higher life of the community may be brought into the 

229 



230 



THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 



service of formal, purposive education. It is certain, also 
that the educative efficiency of these institutions is greatly- 
increased if they work in sympathetic cooperation with 
one another. Too often the home and the school are not 
in cordial sympathy ; the church berates the school, and 
the school is indifferent to the church, and both decry the 
stage ; rich libraries have scarcely a tenth of their educa- 
tive value used, and that in only a desultory way, while 
art galleries and museums are used merely as " show " 
places. This sort of waste will cease, when a community 
comes to understand and appreciate the specific value of 
each of these factors in the w^ork of education, and that 
neither has cause for jealousy or indifTerence regarding 
the others. 

The school is naturally the center around which all 
other factors can be most efifectively grouped. 

(2) CORRELATION OF OTHER FACTORS WITH 
THE SCHOOL > 

A. The Home with the School 

There are thousands of parents, not only in the large 
cities but in the smaller towns and the country as well, 
who have never visited the schools which their children 
attend and do not even know their children's teachers at 
sight. 

The Teacher's Visit to the Home. — To overcome the 
indifference of the home to the school, the teacher must 
take the initiative and visit the homes, all of them if possi- 
ble, certainly those where her coming is most needed. 
Nor must her visits be perfunctory or intrusive ; in no 
instance is it truer that *' the letter killeth, but the spirit 
maketh alive." Only through such sympathetic contact, 

' Refer to Button's " Social Phases of Education." 



CORRELATION Of OTHER FACTORS 



231 



as this should be, with the parents aiul the chikh-en in the 
home, can the teacher learn the conditions which account 
for much of the pupil's intellectual and moral activity or 
deficiency. Also, in no other way so well can the home 
be brought to a sympathetic response to the demands 
which the school may legitimately make upon it. The 
" personal touch," if genuinely sympathetic, always wins. 

Among- the patrons of the school there will most proba- 
bl}- be some whom, on account of their social position, the 
teacher should not visit withotit an invitation. In such 
cases, the duty and responsibility of bringing the home 
into sympathetic correlation with the school rests upon 
the patrons, not the teacher. It seems clear that a public 
school teacher may have to teach children of homes she 
would never visit in a social way, and equally clear that 
no parent should send his children to a teacher whom he 
would be unwilling to have in his home as a social visitor. 
If parents should invite to their homes the teachers of 
their children, and make them welcome there, only good 
could result. 

The School Nurse. — In some of the larger cities, the 
board of education provides school nurses and medical 
inspectors, and these of^cials are helpful in bringing the 
home and the school into sympathetic relation. The nurse 
visits the school daily, inspects the children, gives imme- 
diate aid where only something simple is needed, and 
indicates the cases that seem to require examination by 
the medical inspector. She goes to the homes of the 
children that must, for sanitary reasons, be sent away 
from school for awhile, makes suggestions as to their care, 
helps the mothers, and sees that the chidren get back into 
school as soon as they are able. This sort of work forges 
a strong link between the home and the school. 



232 THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

" Mothers' Meetings." — Regular meetings in which 
teachers and mothers confer together about the needs of 
the children and the work of the school, have proved to 
be a potent factor in strengthening the hold of the school 
upon the home. Such meetings smooth away mutual mis- 
understandings, show to the teacher and to the mother 
each other's view point, enlist the sympathy of each in 
the work and trials of the other, and bring school and 
home into intelligent cooperation. The home will gain 
an appreciation of what the school is trying to do and of 
the difficulties in the way of doing it. The school will 
learn that the homes have rights and limitations which 
must be considered and regarded. The good resulting 
from such meetings and conferences will be greatly in- 
creased if parents will visit the school and inspect its 
work. 

Parents' Visits to the School. — School officials and 
teachers should use every efifort to arouse in parents an 
interest in the work being done for their children, suffi- 
cient to induce them to visit the schools often. Such visits 
will do much to convince both teacher and parent that 
neither can do the best for the pupil without the help of 
the other. The parent will be aroused to greater interest 
in the work of the child, and the teacher will feel a more 
personal concern in each pupil. 

Anything is good which brings the teacher and 
the parents into closer touch, gives the parents a 
clearer comprehension of what the school is doing 
and leads the teacher to a deeper appreciation of home 
conditions. 

Mutual understanding and sympathy, and easier work 
for both the school and the home, always result from this 
correlation. 



CORRELATION OF OTHER FACTORS 2^^ 

B. The Lilirarv w itii the School ^ 
No other factor, outside the home ami llie school, is so 
potent for right education as the puhlic library. This 
fact is being recognized and pressed home to-day upon 
school superintendents and librarians as never before. 

The school, of course, should always have a library of 
its own ; even in each room there should be a few selected 
books for the exclusive use of the teacher and pupils in 
that room. But the school can not afford all the books 
that are needed, and the public library, which must do 
much for culture in the after-school life, should be 
brought into close cooperation with the school. Such 
cooperation enlists the interest of the whole community in 
both the library and the school, and directs the young to 
the richer field for the cultivation of which the school is 
only a preparation. 

Each School a Branch Library. — The best arrange- 
ment is one by which the library comes into the school, 
and through the school into the home. To this end, every 
school, whether in country or city, should be made a 
branch library for the distribution of books. The rural 
schools should be supplied from the state department of 
education. This is the general plan in Ohio, for example. 
Any board of school directors can make a requisition 
upon the state librarian for thirty or forty books, which 
can be kept, if desired, for three months. No expense 
is incurred by the local school authorities, except for 
transportation. In the cities, the same plan can more 
easily be carried out. 

^ Report of the Com. on Libraries, N. E. A., 1899; Proceedings of N. 
E. A., 1897: 1015; 1900: 636; and 1901: 108; Report of Nat. Commissioner 
of Ed., 1897—8: 673; Educational Review 8: 358; Review of Reviews 
22: 48, 56; The Outlook 70: 420; Atlantic Monthly 90: 402; Reports and 
Bulletins of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, 



234 '^'^^ SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

The Teacher and the Library. — The books sent to 
the several schools should be selected for that purpose 
by the teacher, who must, of course, know what books 
are suited to the needs of her pupils. The only way in 
which the teacher can gain this knowledge is by reading 
the books ; she must be able to say, " I have read this book 
myself, and I know it will interest you." 

It is, in fact, an excellent plan for the teacher, in order 
to create or stimulate the children's appetite for good 
books, to read to them. A half hour or hour spent in this 
way once or twice a week will be most fruitful. Often, 
an appreciation of what help and pleasure a book may 
give comes to the child only through the teacher's sympa- 
thetic reading aloud of carefully selected matter. 

The teacher should be a frequent visitor to the public 
library, and should familiarize herself thoroughly with 
its resources. From the knowledge gained in this way 
she should prepare lists of books, pamphlets, and maga- 
zine articles, for collateral reading by her pupils, in his- 
tory, geography, civics, and literature. Indeed, such lists 
may be prepared in almost every subject pursued in the 
grades or in the high school. 

The public library should also do much for the teacher 
herself. There should be a teachers' alcove, filled with 
the best books and periodicals on child study, educational 
psychology, method, and history of education. If possi- 
ble, there should also be a special room set aside for the 
exclusive use of the teachers. 

C. Museums with the School. 

In cities, the schools are just beginning to utilize the 
free museums for the purposes of formal education. The 
more closely the museum is brought into correlation with 



CORRELATION OF OTHER FACTORS 235 

the schools, the more apparent the advantages of such an 
arrangement become. 

The Museum Brought to the School. — As the library 
sends books to the school to be used there in the daily 
work, so the museum may send specimens to the school 
to be used in various ways. Small and simple illustra- 
tive cabinets, inade up of either real specimens or repro- 
ductions, may be sent into the schools for work in the 
numerous forms of nature study. Simple type forms in 
botany, zoology, and mineralogy would be of great value, 
even in the grades, and more particularly in the analytico- 
synthetic presentation of high-school subjects. 

In the museums of the larger cities there is abundant 
material by which to make real and concrete the dif- 
ferent epochs of history, including the much neglected 
but especially rich field of science and invention. 

The School Taken to the Museum. — Classes in the 
various subjects indicated above should be taken often 
to the museum for a more careful and complete study of 
subject-matter and illustrative material than is possible 
with specimens suitable to be sent by the museum to the 
school. In this way, too, as in the case of the public 
library, the young citizens learn to use and to appreciate 
the educational resources of the community outside the 
school. If the citizen does not learn this use and appre- 
ciation when a child he will not be apt to do so when 
grown, and so the chief value of public libraries and 
museums will be greatly diminished. 

D. Art Galleries with the School 

It is not needful here to add anything to what has been 
so often said of late years about the value of an appre- 
ciation of art. Certain it is that we shall not have beautv 



236 THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

abundant in the home, in the school, and in the city 
street, until a generation shall be raised up that shall 
understand and enjoy the beauty of painting, sculpture, 
and architecture. 

It is as much the business of the public school to culti- 
vate the understanding and enjoyment of art as it is its 
business to cultivate the understanding and enjoyment of 
literature. 

But few schools can afford the pictures needed for a 
training in the appreciation of art, and hence the need 
of bringing the public art gallery or the private collec- 
tion into correlation with the school. 

Lending Pictures to the School. — As the free library 
of to-day sends selected books into the schools, there to 
afford knowledge and inspiration and culture, so the pub- 
lic art gallery sends selected pictures into the schools for 
the same purpose. Some of the pictures thus loaned may 
be wall pictures, and others in the form of engravings, 
photographs, and cuts, contained in portfolios. They 
should all be selected with a definite purpose to illustrate 
and make more attractive some particular line of study 
or reading, or simply to appeal as strongly as possible to 
the aesthetic and artistic instinct. 

The School in the Art Gallery. — The plan so success- 
fully used at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh may be 
made effective wherever there is a public art gallery or a 
private collection to which access is permitted. At the 
opening of the schools, the teachers are invited to the Art 
Department of the Institute and there have the beauty 
and the purpose of the best pictures explained by the di- 
rector or some of his staff. Groups of pupils are also 
taken by their teachers, from time to time, to the gallery 
and are taught what to see and how to see. Occasional 



CORRELATION OF OTHER FACTORS 2^7 

informal lectures upon different phases of art are given 
to teachers and pupils. In such ways is the value of the 
art gallery increased to the schools and to coming genera- 
tions of adults. 

E. The Press with the School 

No institution in America is quite so clearly or def- 
initely in the focus of popular regard to-day as is the 
public school. Never before has the news and periodical 
press devoted so much space to the discussion of this and 
other agencies of popular education. Schoolmen every- 
where should be quick to avail themselves of this oppor- 
tunity to promote a real economy of educational forces, 
by bringing the walling press into closer correlation with 
the schools and their work. 

The superintendent can do no better thing for his 
schools or for his community than to furnish to the local 
papers weekly, or even daily, reports of the condition of 
the schools and the work they are actually doing. If the 
board of education is wise it will heartily cooperate with 
the superintendent in this work and will furnish full 
reports of its own official acts. The people are entitled 
to know what their own schools are doing, and the papers 
are usually glad to publish the facts and to support good 
work. 

F. The Pulpit v^^th the School. 

In some sections of the country, where most earnest 
efforts are being made to arouse popular interest in pub- 
lic education, the cooperation of the pulpit has been en- 
listed. The ministers, throughout a given area, all 
preach on the same day upon some theme directly related 
to the work of the schools and their needs. The plan has 
already proved its value and is being widely adopted. 



238 THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

(3) PROJECTION OF THE SCHOOL INTO THE 
COMMUNITY 

A. SCHOOLHOUSES AS COMMUNITY CENTERS 

Practically everywhere, except in a few large cities, 
schoolhouses stand unused from three to five months 
out of every year, and during the time they are in service, 
are used only for the teaching of children. Educational 
economy calls loudly for the prevention of the waste re- 
sulting from this condition. Every schoolhouse should 
be used as a commimity center of education. It need not 
be considered as even primarily for the children of the 
community ; it exists quite as much for the adults also. 
Nothing will do more to carry forward into adulthood 
that impulse to study and to the intellectual life, which 
it is one of the chief purposes of the school to give, than 
the use of the schoolhouse as a nucleus and rallying point 
for various neighborhood interests, literary societies, wom- 
en's clubs, farmers' institutes, reading circles, lecture 
courses, in short, everything not of a partisan or sectarian 
character. Every schoolhouse, whether in country or 
town, should be planned and built with this wider use in 
view. There should be ample seating facilities and ade- 
quate means of artificial lighting. 

The plan of " consolidating schools and transporting 
pupils " lends itself well to this larger usefulness of 
schoolhouses. The vehicles used for conveying children 
to school may be used to convey the older pupils and the 
adults to the schoolhouse on Saturdays or Sundays, or 
at night. 

The " Hesperia Movement." — The form of coopera- 
tion known as the " Hesperia movement " is typical of the 
modern projection of the school into the rural commun- 



PROJECTION OF THE SCHOOL 239 

ity^ and is suggestive of other modes of organizing the 
intellectual i\iu\ social forces of a neighborhood around 
the school. 

This movement, named from the place of its origin, 
(Hesperia, Michigan,) has most successfully brought 
teachers and patrons in the rural districts into close and 
helpful educational and social cooperation. In some cases 
meetings occur only once a year, in others, every month, 
or oftener. At these meetings papers are read by teachers 
and patrons, there are discussions not only of educational 
matters but of other live topics of the day, and often the 
meetings are addressed by lecturers of national reputa- 
tion. Special reading courses are also carried on, and use 
is made of every means of intellectual and social culture. 

There is hardly a rural community in the United States 
where something of this sort may not be done, on a larger 
or smaller scale^ with the people's schoolhouse as a center 
and meeting place. 

In Cities. — It is easier in cities than in the coun- 
try to make the schoolhouse a community center. It has 
been recommended, as a measure of economy, that when 
a city schoolhouse is built, a small auditorium to ac- 
commodate five or six hundred persons be incorporated 
in it. It would add but little to the total cost to 
include also in the building a room suitable for a small 
public library and reading room. Wherever these addi- 
tions are made to the facilities which a community offers 
for adult education, it may be expected that, in answer to 
a popular demand, other rooms will be provided in pub- 
lic school buildings for neighborhood clubs, for adult 
classes in the elements of domestic science, for various 
forms of manual training for adults, and for night classes. 

^ See Review of Re\'ie\vs, Vol. 23, p. 443. 



240 THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

But there is no need to wait until this more genuine 
economy has reached the pockets of the taxpayers, in or- 
der to use pubHc school buildings in the wider service. 
Under watchful but sympathetic supervision the ordinary 
grade rooms of any school building may be used for all 
the purposes named above, except the heavier forms of 
manual training; and even these are being provided for 
in most schools that give their pupils the advantage of 
the best courses of study. 

The idea which has so long held sway, that the school- 
houses are for the use of children only, is false and per- 
nicious, and has been the cause of appalling educational 
waste. If it is advisable to support, at great cost, by pub- 
lic taxation, universities for the education of adults who 
have already had all that public elementary and secondary 
education can give them, surely it is simple justice for the 
state or city to provide other adults, at far less expense, 
with opportunities and facilities for the education which 
they were compelled, as children, to forego. 

B. Public Playgrounds and Vacation Schools 

Cautiously and with misgivings, the school authorities 
of New York and other cities yielded to the urgent re- 
quest of private philanthropic organizations, that the play- 
grounds and play rooms of the public schools be opened 
in the vacation months for directed play and other forms 
of outdoor education. Now, in these cities such use of 
school playgrounds, recreation piers, and parks, consti- 
tute an integral and unquestioned part of the educational 
service which the public pays for, and by which it is 
benefited even more than by the regular work of the 
schools. If vacation schools in cities did no more than 



PROJECTION OF THE SCHOOL 24I 

take the children off tlie physically and morally unhcallh- 
ful streets during- a i:)art of the summer, they would be 
fully justified. These schools not only do this, hut they 
also provide instruction and training in the several 
forms of manual expression, in the domestic and indus- 
trial arts, and are used as centers of social and civic life. 
They offer excellent opportunities for experimental work, 
and in them various problems of teaching and of school 
administration may be conclusively tried out. What has 
been done in New York may be done on a smaller 
scale, but quite as effectively, wherever a few determined 
spirits unite in an effort to apply, in the vacation months, 
the simpler forms of formal education to the spontaneous 
activities, physical as well as mental, of children.^ 

C. Educational Extension. 

Under the term " educational extension " is meant here 
to be included all movements having for their object the 
carrying of knowledge or culture directly to the people 
through other agencies than the school or college. The 
" lyceum " which flourished in the earlier half of the 
nineteenth century, university extension, which drew so 
much attention in the last cjuarter of that century, the 
" Chautauqua movement," and correspondence instruction, 
are all types of educational extension. 

The Pupils of Educational Extension. — In every 
community there are persons who, through force of cir- 
cumstances or perversity of premature choice, have had 

^ All who are interested in this subject of vacation schools and playgrounds 
will find facts and suggestions of the highest value in the references here 
given: The latest Report on Vacation Schools and Play-grounds in N. Y. 
City; Reports on the same subjects, from the " League for Social Service," 
N. Y. City; Articles upon these topics in Harper's Magazine, 105: 22; 107: 
527; Outlook 72: 30; Independent 56: 163; Pedagogical Seminary 9: 237; 
Review of Reviews 16: 190; 17: 710; Report of Nat. Commissioner of 
Education (W'ash. D. C), '94-5, Vol. i, p. 83, Vol. 2, p. 1484; '97-8. 



242 



THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 



only an elementary education. There are others who 
have had the higher schooling, but whose business cares 
have prevented the pursuit of knowledge or culture, out- 
side of their vocation. To meet the needs of all these, 
educational extension developed. 

The work that has been carried forward in New York 
since 1891 is so illustrative and suggestive that a brief 
description of it is given as an excellent example of true 
educational economy.^ 

In New York. — In 1891 the state of New York appro- 
priated $10,000.00 to the work of University Extension. 
The agencies of this extension service are libraries, ex- 
tension teaching by lectures or otherwise, directed home 
study, and summer schools. The field has enlarged 
greatly in the last few years, and now these factors of 
intelligence and culture reach and help more than two 
millions of adults annually in the state of New York. 

Lists of books, outlines, syllabi, and test questions on 
work done are sent out to the remotest hamlets. Bulle- 
tins of detailed information and directions are sent out 
from Cornell to all who are engaged in the agricultural 
and domestic arts. From the same center are also dis- 
tributed leaflets to teachers and others interested in na- 
ture study. University and college professors, high 
school teachers, and any others who can arouse interest, 
inpart information, or deliver a message, are induced to 
give their services, at a nominal cost, in lecturing and 
teaching outside the walls of their schools. 

There is, under the control of the state, a splendid li- 
brary system, with both fixed and traveling libraries. - 

^Report of Nat. Commissioner of Ed., 1899—00, i: 303; World's Work, 4: 
22:1; 5: 3327; Bulletin 276, University of the State of N. Y. (in N. Y. 
City), Forum 29: 332. 

^ Univ. of N. Y., Home Ed. Dept., Bulletin 40, Albany. 



PROJECTION OF THE SCHOOL 243 

One of the most valuable features of the New York 
system of " adult education " is the ti\n>cliiig lantern lec- 
ture. Under state direction and at state expense fine 
slides are made illustrative of travel, nature study, and 
historic events, and these, together with a carefully writ- 
ten lecture and a complete lantern equipment, are loaned 
to any study center requesting them and complying with 
a few liberal conditions. 

Xo other state is doing so much for the dissemination 
of intelligence among its adult citizens, perhaps no other 
can do so much. But there is no school, no matter how 
poor or where situated, that can not become a center of 
educational extension to an extent proportionate to its 
environment. Such work can be done by any small col- 
lege or high school, if only the trustees and the teaching 
corps will see and grasp their opportunity. In one well- 
known institution in the South, resting upon private 
endowment, extension work among " Appalachian Am- 
ericans " is made a prominent feature, and members of 
the faculty are kept in the field for months at a time, 
with lantern outfits, giving illustrated lectures throughout 
the mountains, in every court house, church and school- 
house. The result has been the rapid awakening of a 
people. 

The desire of the people for increased knowledge, and 
their readiness to make use of any facilities to secure it, 
are further evidenced by the rapid growth in late years 
of correspondence schools, Chautauqua circles, and home- 
study clubs. To aid in the increase and improvement in 
these means of intellectual growth seems clearly the duty 
of all who are interested in the truest economy of human 
intelligence, character, and personality. 

Education as a Subject of Extension Work. — The 



244 ^^^" SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

severest indictment that has been brought by the critics 
of the pubHc school is that the people who have had its 
advantages often give it such grudging support. This 
fact justifies the suggestion that education itself be made 
one of the most prominent subjects of extension work. 
There is no community, no matter how backward and in- 
different, that could not be roused to greater effort in be- 
half of its schools, by a series of clear-cut, popular lec- 
tures upon education, especially if these are illustrated by 
lantern views contrasting the fit and the unfit in rural and 
village schoolhouse construction and equipment, and by 
graphic statistical charts showing the ratio of productivity 
and wealth to expenditures for schools in various com- 
munities. 

There is not a district that could not be benefited by the 
service of an educational evangelist working along these 
lines. 

Educational Expositions. — The object lesson is as 
serviceable in informing adults upon the subject of educa- 
tion as it is in instructing and interesting their children in 
the common branches. Bearing this in mind, the teacher, 
principal, or superintendent who wants to interest his 
patrons in good school work should make the school ex- 
position prominent, both throughout his annual term and 
at its close. The county superintendent should promptly 
avail himself of the best representative work of the in- 
dividual schools, and place it prominently on display at 
the county associations and institutes, where it will be 
not only a source of inspiration to the teachers, but a 
means of information and a stimulus to the general 
public. 

This material could also be exhibited at the county 
fair, with most excellent results. Anything is good 



PROJECTION OF THE SCHOOL 



245 



which keeps the i)ul)lic schools ami their work [)roini- 
nently before the people. 

Exhibits of Model Schools and Schoolhouses.— 
Good as it is to keep the actual work of the pupils before 
the public, it is even better to show the good teacher 
at work with proper facilities. In almost any rural com- 
munity the schools could be greatly improved by placing 
at country fairs, or other local gatherings, a model school- 
house, and providing also for actual teaching therein by a 
skillful and experienced teacher. The house, wliich 
would have to be portable, should be a correct model in 
all its proportions, and in its equipment for heating, ven- 
tilating, lighting, seating, etc. It would be true economy 
for the state educational office of any state to keep sev- 
eral such houses in the field throughout the summer. 
A plan similar to this has been used wath excellent re- 
sults in illustrating the best methods of agriculture in 
some of the great agricultural states.^ There is every 
reason why the public education office of any state should 
carry on such a propaganda in stimulating educational 
activity. 



The road upward from ignorance, want, narrowed 
lives, and materialistic and selfish ideals, is a long 
and steep one. The summits to which it leads will 
not be reached in one or in two or in a dozen gen- 
erations of men. But each year of such correlation of 
schools and community as is now everywhere going 
forward, will put heart and strength into the climber 

^ " Iowa's campaign for better corn," Review of Reviews, 30: 563. 



246 THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY 

of the upward way, and a people shall be developed who 
will have power and skill, strength and refinement, time 
and ability to read a little of the best literature, to have 
and enjoy good music and pictures, to cultivate self- 
control, personal poise, and the gentle graces of life all 
the more needed in a strenuous age. 

Merely to live in the midst of this awakening, to see the 
splendid sweep and trend of this movement to socialize 
and democratize the schools, is a blessed privilege. To have 
however small a share in it, to be able to say in later years, 
" I was a part of it," will be honor and happiness. 



INDEX 



Administration, 

of the city school, 86. 

of the college, lOO. 

of the rural school, 24. 
Affiliated colleges, 148. 
Alternation, 

in the daily program, 68. 

in the yearly program, 69. 
Apparatus and furniture, 

in the city school, 85. 

in the rural school, 19. 
Appointment of teachers, 168. 
Arithmetic in the curriculum, 
180. 

Value of, 188. 
Arithmetical aids, 22. 
Art galleries and the schools, 

ass- 
Assembly hall, 

of the city school, 83. 

of the college, 99. 
Associations of teachers, 153. 

Protective, 154. 
Athletics in college, 109. 

Bachelor's course of three 

years, 225. 
" Batavia Experiment," 22},. 
Bird day in school, 53. 
Blackboards, 20. 
Board of education, 

City, 159. 

County, 131. 

State, 129. 
Boarding place of rural teach- 
er, 37- 
Bookcase, 22. 
Buildings and grounds, 

of the city schools, 80. 

of the rural schools, 11. 
Bulletins, Educational, 121. 



Certificates, Number and 

grades of, 138. 
Certification of teaciicrs, 138, 

167. 
Citizenship the aim of the 

school, 175. 
Citizenship defined, 175. 
City school equipment, 80. 
City system of schools, 159. 
Civics in the curriculum, 181. 

Value of, 189. 
Civilization, Criterion of, 208. 
Classifying pupils, 26. 
Cloak rooms, 

in the city school, 83. 
in the rural school, 15. 
Closing exercises, 
of the city school, 98. 
of the college, 116. 
of the rural school, 
for the day, 52. 
for the term, 76. 
Clubs a factor in college gov- 
ernment, 107. 
Coeducation on the play 

ground, 74. 
College, 

Function of, 197. 
buildings and equipment, 98. 
Organization of session, 100. 
Position of in an educational 
system, 146. 
College education. Products of, 

199. 
Comfort of pupils an aid to 

good order, 62. 
Commencement, 
in college, 116. 
in rural schools, 78. 
Commercial course in high 
school, 194. 



247 



248 



INDEX 



Compulsory attendance, 142. 
Concentration of rural schools, 

141. 
Concentration of studies, 212. 
Conducting the school, 

the city school, 88. 

the college, loi. 

the rural school, 40. 
Consolidation of rural schools, 

141. 
Cooperation of students in col- 
lege government, 113. 
Coordination of studies, 212. 
Correlation of school and com- 
munity, 229. 
Correlation of studies, 211-213. 
Corridors, 82. 
Cottages for students, 99. 
County high schools, 145. 
County superintendent, 130. 
County system of schools, 133. 
Course of study. Length of, 

220. 
Criterion of civilization, 208. 
Criticism by the teachers, 169. 
Culture, 208. 
Culture studies, 185. 
Culture values in curriculum, 

186. 
Current events, 51. 
Curriculum, 

Administration of, 207. 

Fundamental principles of, 
172. 

of the college, 197. 

of the elementary school, 191. 

of the rural school, 30. 

of the secondary school, 191. 

of the teachers' training 
school, 202. 

Sociological and psycholog- 
ical, 173. 

Substance of, 176. 
Culture as a product of educa- 
tion, 201, 208. 
" Culture epoch " theory, 210. 

Daily program an aid to good 

order, 64. 
Desks, 19. 



Disciplinary values in the cur- 
riculum, 186. 
Discipline in college, 114. 
Discipline as a product of edu- 
cation, 207. 
Discipline, Mental, 207. 
Disorder, 62. 
Distribution of school funds, 

125. 
Dormitories for students, 99. 
Drawing in the curriculum, 190. 
Drinking facilities, 

in the city school, 85. 

in the rural school, 23. 
Drudgery, 216. 

Value of, 47. 

Economy in education, 47. 
defined, 7. 
differentiated from method 

in education, 8. 
Divisions of, 9. 
Economy of time and energy, 

2og. 
Education, Objects of, 8, 199. 
Educational bulletins, 121. 
Educational experimentation, 

225. 
Educational expositions, 244. 
Educational extension, 241. 
Educational observation, 226. 
Educational council of princi- 
pals, 166. 
Election of studies, 217. 
Emergency room in city 

schools, 84. 
Eminent domain of city school 

boards, 163. 
Employment of teachers, 138. 
Equipment of city schools, 80. 
Examinations, 220. 
Exhibitions, School, 58, 78. 
Exits, 82. 
Experimentation in education, 

225. 
Expositions, 

Blank forms for, 60. 
in the college, 116. 
Material for, 58. 
Method of, yy. 



INDEX 



249 



School, 244. 

Time and place of, 61. 

Value of, 60. 
Expulsion from college, 115. 
Extension of school term, 

by spring schools, 140. 

by voluntary teaching, 140. 
'■ Extension " work, 241. 
Extra branches in the rural 
schools, 70. 

Fatigtie, 64. 

Affecting tlie daily program, 

.94- . 

Discriminated from weari- 
ness, 93. 

Due to misapplied effort, 95. 

Rarely due to study, 94. 
" First da}'," 

in the city school, 87. 

in the rural school, 38. 
Fitness of teachers, 134. 
Fraternities in college, 108. 
Free text books, 144. 
Functions of the different 

schools, 184. 
Furniture and apparatus, 

of the city school, 85. 

of the rural school, 19. 

Geography in the curriculum, 
180. 

Value of, 189. 
Good order in the college, loi. 
Government, 

in the city school, 96. 

in the college, 101-114. 

in the rural school, 41. 
Grading and grouping in the 
rural school, 24. 

Advantages of, 27. 

Difficulties in, 29. 

Suggestive scheme of, 30. 
Grading and promoting, 219. 
Graduates' day in college, 116. 
Grounds and buildings, 

of the city school, 80. 

of the rural school, 11. 
Group work, 68. 

Half-day sessions, 92. 



High schools, 

City, 191. 

County, 145. 

Rural, 144. 
" liespcria Movement," 238. 
History in the curriculum, 180. 

\'alue of, 189. 
Home and school, 230. 

Incentives, False and true, 

55. 56. 
Individual help, 71. 
Individualism, Danger of, 172. 
Individual and society, 209. 
Inspection by the principal, 90. 
Institutes, teachers', 150. 
Institutional factors of educa- 
tion, 229. 
Interest, 46, 

and feeling, 215. 

doctrine misapplied, 216. 

Kinds of, 47. 
Interrelation of school units, 

123. 
Interrelation of subjects, 214. 
Intervals of promotion, 221. 

Knowledge as a product of ed- 
ucation, 200. 

Knowledge insufficient to equip 
a teacher, 103, 

Laboratories, pedagogical, 120. 

Lamps in the schoolhouse, 22. 

Lancaster plan, 69. 

Last day exercises in the rural 
school, 79. 

Length of course, 220. 

Levying tax for city schools, 
162. 

Library in the city schools, 84. 

Library and school, Correlation 
of, 233. 

Library, Teachers' use of pub- 
lic, 234. 

Libraries for teachers, 154. 

Literature in the curriculum, 
i8r. 
Value of, 190. 

Local tax for schools, 124. 



250 



INDEX 



Management, 

in the room, 6i. 

on the playground, 72. 
Manumental training, 177. 

for girls, 179. 

\'alues of, 187. 
Maps and globes, 21. 
Marking, 56. 

Medicine case in school, 23. 
Model schools, 120. 

Buildings for, 118. 

for public inspection, 245. 
Mothers' meetings, 232. 
Motives in school management, 

43- 
Mottoes in school management, 

50. 
Museums, Pedagogical, 119. 
Museums and the school, Cor- 
relation of, 234. 
Music, 
in the curriculum, 190. 
in school management, 51. 

New students in college, 105- 

113- 
Normal schools, 149. 
Nurse, School, 231. 

Opening exercises, 

in the city school, 91. 

in the college, 112. 

in the rural school, 49. 
Opening school, 38. 
Operations of the mind, 183. 
Order, 62. 
Organization of school work, 

in the city school, 86. 

in the college, 100. 

in the rural school, 24. 
Organization of school systems, 
122. 

Parents' visits to the school, 

232. 
Pay of teachers, Scale of, 168. 
Payment of teachers by grade 

of certificate, 128. 
Pedagogical laboratories, 120. 
Pedagogical museums, 119. 
Pensions for teachers, 158. 



Personality of the teacher in 

school government, 62. 
Physical fitness of the teacher. 

Physical training in the curric- 
ulum, 182. 
Pictures in the school, 236. 
Play, Dangerous, y^. 
Playground management, 72. 
Playgrounds in cities, Public, 

240. 
Playgrounds, space for, in city 

schools, 81. 
Power as a product of educa- 
tion, 200. 
Practice schools, 120. 
Buildings for, 118. 
Press and school, Correlation 

of, 237. 
Principals, 165. 
Duties of, 86. 
Equipment of, 88. 
Inspection by, 90. 
Office work of, 91. 
Teaching by, 91. 
Private schools. State control 

. of, 157. 
Prizes, 155. 
Program, 
for a bird day, 53. 
Closing, 79. 
Daily, 67. 

for opening exercises, 50. 
Projection of the school into 

the community, 238. 
Promotion and grading, 219. 
Promotion intervals, 221. 
Psychological aspect of the cur- 
riculum, 173-182. 
Psychological values of studies, 

185. . 
Public library, Teachers' use 

of, 234. 
" Pueblo plan." 71. 
Pulpit and school, Correlation 

of, 237. 
Punishment, 44. 
by deprivation, 44. 
Corpornl, 45. 
Purposes of, 45. 



INDEX 



251 



Teacher's relation to, 46. 
Pupil self-government, 97. 
Pupil and teacher, Relation of, 
41- 

Quarreling on the playground. 



Reading circles for teachers, 

Religious associations in col- 
lege, 107. 
Reports to parents, 57. 
Revenues for schools, 123. 
Rules in management, 42. 

not needed in college, 105. 
Rural schools, 11. 

Concentration of, 141. 

Conducting, 40. 

Equipment of, II. 

Organization of, 24. 

Taking charge of, 37. 
Rural high schools, 144. 

Scale of pay of teachers, 168. 
Scholarship of teacher an aid 

in school government, 63. 
School government, 

in the city school, 96. 

in the college, 100. 

in the rural school, 40. 
Schoolhouses (rural), 14. 

Air space in, 17. 

Construction of, 15. 

Heating of, 17. 

Site for, 12. 

Ventilation of, 18. 

Yard for, 13. 
Schoolhouses as community 

centers, 238. 
School nurse, 231. 
School systems, 122. 

City, 159. 

County, 133. 

State, 123. 
School visitors, 170. 
School year, 224. 
Science in the curriculum, 176. 

Value of, 186. 



Self government, 43. 

in college, 113. 

in school, 97. 
Shortening the college course, 

224. 
Signals in calling and dismiss- 
ing, 71- 
Site, 

of the city school, 80. 

of the rural school, 12. 
Social life in college, 106. 
Socialization of the individual, 

208. 
Social values of studies, 185. 
Society and the individual, 209. 
Sociological aspects of the cur- 
riculum, 173, 176. 
Special days to be observed, 53. 
Spring schools, 140. 
State control of private 

schools, 156. 
State superintendent, 128. 
State system of schools, 123. 
Student cooperation in college 

government, 113. 
Student organizations, 107. 
Study at school, 66. 
Superintendent, 

City, 164. 

County, 130. 

State, 128. 
Systems of schools, 

City, 159. 

County, 153. 

State, 123. 

Teacher on the playground, 

72-75- 
Teacher and pupil. Relations 

of, 41. 
Teachers, 

in city schools, 166. 

in rural schools. 138. 
Teachers' associations, 153. 

certification, 138. 

criticisms, 169. 

culture, 136. 

employment, 138. 

fitness, 134. 

institutes, 150. 



252 



INDEX 



knowledge of subject-matter, 

135. 
liberty, 169. 
meetings, 189. 
moral character, 136. 
pensions, 158. 
personality, an aid to good 

order, 62. 
professional skill, 135. 
professional training, 149. 
responsibility to the com- 
munity, 134. 
scholarship as an aid to good 

order, 63. 
tenure of office, 168. 
training schools, 118, 121, 

170, 202. 
use of the public library, 234. 
visits to other rooms, 90. 
visits to parents, 230. 
Teaching power a factor in 

college government, 102. 
Text-books, 
Free, 144. 

State uniformity of, 144. 
Supply of, 143. 
Time economized in college, 

100. 

Time in college and high 
school, 223. 



Toilet rooms, 184. 

" Town and gown," loi. 

Training schools for teachers, 

118, 149, 170. 
Transportation to school, 141. 
Trespassing by pupils, 74. 

Uniformity in text books, 144. 

Unity of educational processes, 
174. 

Unity in education, 100. 

University, in educational sys- 
tem, 147. 

Utilitarian values in the cur- 
riculum, 186. 

Vacation schools, 240. 
Values, utilitarian, disciplinary, 

cultural. 186. 
Visitors, School, 170. 
Visits of the teacher to other 

rooms, 90. 
to parents, 230. 
Voluntary systemization of 

schools, 147. 

Waste in education, 218. 
Water supply of rural schools. 

Weariness and fatigue, 93. 



Text-Books in Manual Training 



COMPTONS FIRST LESSONS IN WOOD WORKING 

By Alfred G. Compton, of the College of the City <>f 

New York ......... 30 cents 

A handbook for children, taking up the use of representative wood 

working tools with their applications, and giving sufficiently specific and 

exact directions to enable any teacher successfully to begin the work of 

manual training. 

GOLDEN'S LABORATORY COURSE IN WOOD-TURNING 
By Michael J. Golden, M.E., Professor of Practical 
Mechanics in Purdue University . . . . .80 cents 
A practical text-book for manual training schools, designed to give 

the student a knowledge and command of the tools and material used 

in wood-turning. All the tools and machines are fully illustrated and 

their use clearly described. 

HOFFMAN'S SLOYD SYSTEM OF WOOD WORKING 

By B. B. Hoffman, A.B., formerly Superintendent of the 
Baron de Hirsch Fund Trade Schools. .... $1.00 
The object of this book is to give an account of the theory and 
practical application of the " Sloyd System " of manual training. It 
also includes a list and drawings of the models of the " Rodhe System " 
for children of the age of five to eleven years, filling the void between 
the kindergarten and the Sloyd system. In the treatment of the prac- 
tical work, as few technical expressions as possible have been used, so 
that a teacher who may have had no previous experience in work of this 
kind may nevertheless be able to follow out a course of manual training 
in wood work without any outside assistance. 

SiCKELS'S EXERCISES IN WOOD WORKING 

By IviN SiCKELS, M.S., of the College of the City of 

New York $1.00 

This book consists of two parts: The first, a treatise on wood, 
including its growth, structure, properties, and kinds, together with 
causes of its decay, and means of its preservation. The second part 
contains a description, with illustrations, of the various tools used in the 
exercises. 



Copies of any of these books will be sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(.184) 



Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching 

Edited by E. C. BRANSON, A.M. 
Professor of Pedagogy, Georgia State Normal School. 

Cloth, 12mo, 385 pages Price. $1,00 



For more than half a century Page's Theory and Prac- 
tice of Teaching has been the recognized standard and 
accepted mentor of the teachers' profession. Since its 
first publication in 1847 it has passed through more 
editions, has been more largely read, and has exerted a 
deeper influence upon successive generations of teachers 
than any other work ever published. Its usefulness and 
popularity remain undiminished; it is still the first book 
recommended for the young teacher's reading and guid- 
ance, and still continues a never failing source of 
instruction and inspiration in the teacher's work. 

In the present edition the publishers have given the 
original work the most attractive form and dress in which 
it has ever been presented to the public. The chapters 
are introduced by apposite quotations and are followed by 
topical outlines, subjects for discussions or papers, refer, 
ences to pedagogical works, bibliographies of teachers' 
books, and such other aids as will serve to heighten the 
value of the original work for private students, for 
classrooms, and for reading circles. 



Copies sent, prepaid, to any address on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

New York • Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(198) 



Books lor Teachers 



FOR THE STUDY OF PEDAGOGY 
Aiken's Methods of Mind-Training 
Aiken's Exercises in Mind-Training . 
Alling-Aber's Experiment in Education 
Hailmann's History of Pedagogy 
Hewett's Pedagogy for Young Teachers 
Hinsdale's The Art of Study 
King's School Interests and Duties 
Mann's School Recreations and Amusements 
Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching . 
Palmer's Science of Education . 
Payne's School Supervision 
Roark's Method in Education 
Roark's Psychologj' in Education 
Seeley's History of Education . 
Shoup's History and Science of Education 
Swett's American Public Schools 
White's Elements of Pedagogy . 
White's School Management 



^.00 
1.00 
1.25 
.60 
.85 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 
1 00 
1.25 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 
1.00 



FOR THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Dewey's Psychology ..... 
Halleck's Psycholog}^ and Psychic Culture . 
Hewett's Psychology' for Young Teachers . 
Putnam's Text-Book of Psychology . 



1.25 

1.25 

.85 

1.00 



New York 
(197) 



Copies sent, prepaid, to any address on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 



Important Pedagogical Works 

By RURIC N. ROARK 
Dean of the Department of Pedagogy, Kentucky State College 



ROARK'S PSYCHOLOGY IN EDUCATION 

Cloth, 12mo, 312 pages Price $1.00 

This new work is designed for use as a text-book in 
Secondary and Normal Schools, Teachers' Training Classes, 
and Reading Circles. The general purpose of the book is 
to give teachers a logical and scientific basis for their daily 
work in the schoolroom. It makes a distinct departure 
from the methods heretofore in vogue in the treatment of 
Psychology, and is justly regarded as the most important 
contribution to pedagogical science and literature in 
recent years. 

ROARK'S METHOD IN EDUCATION 

Cloth, 12mo, 349 pages Price $1.00 

The second book of Roark's Pedagogical Series is 
designed for Normal Schools, Teachers' Reading Circles, 
and for private reading by every teacher who seeks a key 
to the solution of the problems that present themselves in 
the schoolroom. By its practical application and illustra- 
tion of sound pedagogical principles, it presents a working 
manual of great helpfulness to all teachers, both to the 
experienced and the inexperienced. 



Copies of either of the above books luill be sent, prepaid, to any address 
on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(199) 



MAR 2 19C5 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 287 880 7 



